Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to criticize the New Public Management (NPM) in the higher education of Iran with a moral lens. Qualitative content analysis was used for this purpose and the fourth to sixth National Development Plans as well as the Comprehensive Scientific Map of Iran were investigated. The model of NPM that is promoted in the Iranian higher education mostly emphasizes corporatization and the diversification of financial resources, while less attention has been paid to the other dimensions, such as customer-orientation and accountability. The findings revealed that the NPM in Iranian higher education (a kind of pseudo-neoliberalism) is not only incompatible with the Islamic moral goals, but there are also significant contradictions. NPM is based on the commodification of knowledge and the homo economicus, while in Islam, emphasis is on the value of knowledge too, and the truth-seeking is the important mission of knowledge.