Analysis of the penetration of academic capitalism on the Iranian higher education system by analyzing the country's strategic documents

The present study, as a qualitative study, tries to examine the scope and radius of the influence of academic capitalism in the higher education system of the country by analyzing the superior documents. For this purpose, using qualitative content analysis method and using inductive approach, the textual content of higher education upstream documents as communication strategies was analyzed and the concepts were extracted in the form of open and Axial codes. The results of content analysis of six selected higher education documents and mandatory statements for universities, which are indicative of academic capitalism, were extracted and categorized into twelve main concepts. These concepts include commercialization, commodification, globalization, customer-orientation, Privatization, transparency and accountability, competitiveness and quantification, new public management, internationalization, changing university funding policies, and designing interstitial organizations. By taking attention to paradigm shifts stemming from the knowledge-based economy These findings show that although today market-based reforms in higher education exist throughout the world, But what is currently evolving in the Iranian higher education system is the privatization and commercialization of higher education, which, as a faint copy of the logic of neoliberalism, justifies the view of the profitability of knowledge and academia. Such market-oriented reforms are not only in complete contrast with the principles of religious value in an Islamic society, but even by neglecting some of the considerations of the Iranian-Islamic model in the management of the country's academic institutions, due to the lack of appropriate hardware and software conditions and absence of various infrastructures, it is not compatible with the educational goals of the country