Background & Aims: Universities play an important role in educating efficient and entrepreneurial human resources and producing knowledge for other institutions and organizations in society, and this role and position of excellence in knowledge-based development is not hidden from anyone. Since governance is one of the most important aspects of higher education and has a great impact on educational and research activities, it has been significantly affected by these changes. The general purpose of the current research was to investigate the impact of university governance with the approach of developing fourth-generation universities on future foresight in Babol universities in order to present a model.
Methods: This research is applied in terms of purpose, which was conducted with a mixed approach (qualitative and quantitative). In the qualitative approach, the Delphi method was used, and in the quantitative approach, the descriptive correlation type method was used. The statistical population in the qualitative department of the professors of the universities of Babol city, who had management experience of more than 10 years and the scientific rank of associate professor and above, was identified in the number of 20 people using the purposeful sampling method and were present in the study. Based on the saturation law, the number of 10 was determined and was selected as a statistical sample. The main goal of this stage of the research was to examine and explore the concepts and categories related to university governance with the approach of developing fourth-generation universities and creating a questionnaire for the quantitative part. Therefore, at this stage, in order to achieve the indicators of academic governance with the approach of developing fourth-generation universities, through in-depth and exploratory interviews individually with the scientific experts who were purposefully selected, the necessary qualitative data were collected. Concepts and categories were identified and analyzed. These concepts and categories became the basis for developing a tool (questionnaire) for university governance with the approach of developing fourth-generation universities, thus a "qualitative review" was carried out at this stage. Since the current research deals with the impact of university governance with the approach of developing fourth-generation universities on future foresight in Babol universities in order to provide a model, in this research, the researcher used the data obtained through interviews and questionnaires after extracting and classifying through SPSS20 and PLS3.2 software and Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistical tests, single sample t, exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, Friedman test, and structural equations have been analyzed. What will be stated next is data analysis based on qualitative, quantitative, and inferential data.
Results: Based on the coefficients of the path, there is a factor load of 0.295 between the exogenous variable (university governance with the development approach of fourth-generation universities) and the endogenous variable (foresight), also because the t-value (4.587) is outside the range (2.58 and -2.58), so the impact of university governance with the approach of developing fourth-generation universities on the future is significant at the level of 0.99. Looking at the t value of the components of both variables, we find that this relationship is significant between all the components of the variables. Among the variable components of university governance with the development approach of fourth-generation universities, the highest t-statistic belongs to the "university perspective" component from the set of organizational dimension components with a value of 44.166, and among the prospective components, the highest t-statistic belongs to the stages component. The executable is associated with the value 152.210. The results of data analysis in this section have shown that the relationship between the impact of university governance and the development approach of fourth-generation universities in the future has been confirmed and there is a significant correlation between all variables. Also, after examining the relationship between university governance and the development approach of fourth-generation universities, the main hypothesis was confirmed.
Conclusion: The Conclusions of this research are based on the data obtained from interviews with professors and informants in this field. According to the presented discussion, university governance with the approach of developing fourth-generation universities has very important effects in the fields of foresight and science production. Fourth-generation universities, as advanced and innovative higher education institutions, can contribute to the development of technology and innovation, the promotion of future skills, leading research, and effective interaction with industry and society. Appropriate university governance can promote these goals and help realize the future and produce science in societies and the world. These efforts not only lead to scientific and technological progress, but also help to realize economic, social, and cultural goals in human societies. As a result, university governance with the approach of developing fourth-generation universities can help the progress and development of societies and the world as a broad and fundamentally similar whole. The most attention to the importance of the development of the fourth generation universities in the field of university governance can create positive effects and the development of societies and the world for a long time. Fourth-generation universities, as institutions of higher education focusing on advanced research and development of new technologies, play an essential role in scientific and technological development. They contribute to the production of scientific and practical knowledge related to the trade, industry, and economy of societies and are very effective for economic progress. The relationship between academic governance and the development approach of fourth-generation universities is a variable of foresight at an average level, and the impact of academic governance and the development approach of fourth-generation universities on foresight is significant.