The importance of revising the university courses in Iran

8 January 2012

The recent declaration of the higher education authorities in Iran about the fact that that a large group of PhD holders in Iran are not able to find a job and also the chance of our graduates in the Iranian job market is one tenth of the chance of the general public, are good evidences that there is a serious need for the revision of the content of University courses in our country.

I believe the syllabi of science and Engineering courses in Iranian Universities are desperately out of date and in the last decades the quality of higher education in Iran has had a nose dive in favour of the quantity. Now that there is a general understanding that there is a serious mismatch between the needs of the industry and what university courses offer as well as what goes on in the rest of the world, I think it would be important for our university to be at the forefront of the debate on the content and direction of university courses.

These days the idea of "Work Based Learning " courses is getting more and more popularity in Europe and America. Certainly for the Master and doctorate courses it is very important that the research should be directed towards satisfying the needs of the industry.

I also believe that the work based learning idea needs to be introduced to Iranian higher education institutions in order to bring our universities and industry together and educate engineers who are able to have a critical view of the practices at work, come up with new ideas and satisfy the needs of our fledgling industry.

I hereby invite all those who have strong opinions about the content and direction of university courses in our country to take part in this national debate.