Intergenerational Transformation in the Academic Life of University Professors

For a long time, academic life in Iran has been a controversial issue, and the educational and research performance of academics has been subject to significant and controversial changes. Some lawsuits have shown the loss of academic values, academic norms, academic responsibilities, and other changes. For Iranian society, these issues are of vital importance in a world where life has become more and more knowledgeable and its study is necessary. This paper studies the evolution of scientific life between three generations of university professors by qualitative method and using the theory based on “GT”. Scholars were selected in the framework of a targeted sample among the professors of all three comprehensive universities in Tehran (Tehran, Tarbiat Modares and Shahid Beheshti). Required data were obtained through deep and semi-structured exploratory interviews with theoretical saturation by 52 samples, and were analyzed using Atlas-based software. Results showed that the professors had different strategies in their interaction with the causal, environmental and background conditions; First-generation masters were accustomed to educational and elitist universities, and education with them was more important than research, and had a good relationship with their students. Full-time residence on campus is a habit for them by turning the university toward research. Second-generation masters are focusing on a combination of education and research, and some of them have led to applied large projects. Third generation professors have been naturally materialized. Their craftiness has led to a reduction in campus accommodation, and the professor seeks to establish knowledge-based companies and socialize student business students in order to earn knowledge of wealth production. The result of these strategies is the decline of norms to the importance of the affair and the interest of the scientific profession. Despite the differences between the three generations, they share common concerns, including: political dominance over academic affairs, quantity domination and quality decline, weakness of social interactions, formal paper writing, unplanned and uneven extension of higher education, weak academic international cooperation, and weakness of social capital.