university good governance; the study of autonomy and accountability in islamic azad university, qazvin province

university autonomy and accountability have been playing such a vital role in all aspects of university governance that their importance cannot be over emphasized. autonomy can be defined as “the right of a group of people to govern itself or to organize its own activities” and being autonomous means “being independent and having the power to make your own decisions”. on the other hand, accountability means being responsible for decisions or actions and being required or expected to justify them. the purpose of this study is to examine and assess the degree and sufficiency of university autonomy in the four area of institutional, financial, staff, and academic and also the degree of accountability of universities to their external stakeholders. the instrument for gathering data was a researcher-made questionnaire with a five- point  likert scale and its calculated alpha was above ./70. this means that the instrument was reliable. data were obtained randomly from university managers at islamic azad university branches in qazvin province. the data were analyzed using percentage and five-point likert scale to objectively determine the degree of accountability and the sufficiency of the university autonomy for good governance of their branches at the four area of autonomy from the view point of university chancellors, vice-chancellors, dean and head of the departments. the analysis of data in relation to research questions were investigated, using one-sample t-test by means of version 18 of spss software. the findings indicate that the degree of autonomy in the four area is not sufficient to govern the university well and the university administrators suggest that granting more autonomy from the central administration of islamic azad university and ministry of science, technology and research to the university branches may hold them to be more accountable to internal and external stakeholders.