بررسي مباني فرهنگي آموزش عالي در جهان غرب و ايران

A Review of the Cultural Bases of Higher Education in the West and in Iran

It is intended in this article to explain and justify the role of higher education in culture. Notions such as university, culture, and society are involved in this issue. In order to keep our concentration on the main subject, only two main functions of the university, that is research and teaching, are considered in this article, because in many cases universities are established to solve problems whose solution requires scientific research and teaching the outcomes. As the function of the universities in the society involves these two main careers, it seems necessary to explain them and clarify their relations first. Afterwards, the historical background of the role of universalities in the culture of the society will be reviewed in recent centuries in Iran, without deep analysis of the notion of university, culture, and society. The effect of other fundamental infrastructures on culture and the functions of universities in this regard raise another important issue being considered in our analysis. In this way, an introduction to the function of universities in the culture of the society is presented in this article. The process reveals that universities not only have enriched the culture of the societies, but also they have been referred to as scientific sources in the society. This role involves, however, the universities which are developed according to the real needs of the society. On the other hand, in countries like Iran whose universities are originally copied and transmitted from other countries, universities are facing problems relating to their fundamental cultural philosophy. In such countries the only solution for universities to get rid of these problems and accomplish their real functions is to refer to the cultural bases of the society.