The Study of social policy in the field of Higher Education & Employment and its Outcomes (A case study of Shahid Beheshti University)

Social Policy is the government decisions on distribution of resources and facilities for achieving a certain goal in a particular period of time. These decisions are aimed at increasing the society members’ well-being and/or solving a social problem. Harmony in section and inter-section policy making provides social order which is necessary as the basis for achieving the social system objectives. Organizations in charge and especially Higher Education Ministry, are going to train skilled human forces who are equipped with knowledge and are able to use it proportionate with the current and future status of the country as well. One of the most important indicators of efficacy in higher education system is its compatibility with business market and employment. In fact, higher education and employment are two decisive sections of social system. Policy making in these two areas requires co-ordination and some considerations such as size and level of their needs simultaneously. Despite the economic problems in the status quo, which have been led to unemployment rise, the considerable rate of unemployment of the educated labor forces in the country shows incompatibility between the policies of these two sections. In other words, this study deals with the lack of co-ordination in policy making between Higher Education Ministry and Employment Department as well as the outcomes due to the certain objectives like social order and well-being. In this study, the research questions have been addressed at two levels; micro and macro-analyses. In macro-level, documentary research method has been applied. At first, by adopting content analysis method, above documents and Five year development plans of the Islamic Republic of Iran, were used to examine the co-ordination between two sections of employment and higher education with respect to these development plan. Then by making use of the secondary analysis and using the current statistics, the harmony between these two sections were investigated. Such intersection harmony was measured through survey research method from the graduate students of Shahid Beheshti University. The findings of this study showed that the more the harmony between employment and education policies was, the more statistical co-ordination and therefore the more compatibility would exist between these two sections outputs after their administration. In macro-level, the findings indicated lack of co-ordination between higher education and employment policies with respect to the five year development plans. It represents the gap between the graduate students and job opportunities. The micro-level findings also highlighted the inter-section lack of harmony. Almost 40% of graduate students from Shaid Beheshti University are unemployed. Among employed graduate students, 12% confirmed the lack of harmony between their fields of study and their jobs. Unemployment of graduate students and/or lack of harmony between their majors and their professions present the discrepancies between Higher Education Ministry and Employment Department. Such disorder leads to unemployment of graduate students, experts’ immigration, and thus investment loss in micro-level.