The Process of Universities Internationalization: A Case Study of Higher Education in Iran

Abstract The 21st century can be named the total knowledge-based century. So countries consider the role of higher education more than ever. Therefore the evolution of higher education and the consequent evolution of universities is inevitable. These evolutions include the internationalization of universities and higher education centers. In order to achieving this, and for the first time in Iran, a university with certain international mission and purepose was established in the last two decades. A research project was conducted in order to supervise the process of internationalization of this “university”. The purpose of this paper is to explain the internationalization process in this “university”. Generally and for achieving mentioned objective the data were gathered from four statistical population – managers, faculty members, professionals and students and with the census and sampling method. The tools for measurements were the researcher-made questionaires. The data were analyzed in order to find the answer of the question “How the internationalization process of this “university” is going on?”. the results indicated that the general status of the internationalization process of this “university” is in satisfactory level. From among the six factors the internationalization process has satisfactory status in terms of commitment, planning and operationalize of plans. but , it is at a relatively satisfactory level in reinforcement, awareness and review. So regarding the importance and position of the mentioned university in national and supranational levels, it is necessary to make more efforts for reviewing and reinforcing the mentioned activities in order to develop the internationalization process by using the internationalization process cycle of universities so that it can reach the completely satisfactory and desired level. Suggestions have been made about this.