1-1 Definition and Purpose of the Program
The undergraduate program in economics was prioritized in the Economics Working Group of the Council for the Transformation and Promotion of the Humanities, and a draft of the new undergraduate program in economics was developed in early 2012 based on the following subjects.
Strengthening the student's awareness of current developments in the global economy
through a draft prepared and includes the titles of courses and topics, and was sent to 286 faculty members of 25 academic and research centers across the country for a survey.
80 members of the faculty of the country's universities and research institutes announced in written and in interview that the text of this statement is available at the Secretariat of the Transformation Council. Using the comments received from the professors, the initial draft was revised and the members of the Economics Working Group from 2013 up to the end of 2017, with the participation of other professors of economics, studied and examined the subject of titles and topics. Finally, the new program was finalized in the eighty-first session of the Economics Working Group on December 29, 2016
, and then approved in the one hundred and thirty-seventh session of the Council for the Transformation and Promotion of the Humanities on May 22, 2017
.
In the second section, the background of the current program of the undergraduate course in the field of economic sciences is mentioned, and in the third section, the reasons for the integration of the fields in the undergraduate course in the JALAL program are discussed.
The criteria for compiling a new program are the subject of the fourth section, and the general structure of the JALAL of undergraduate program in economics, including the tables of compulsory and optional courses, is discussed in the fifth section.
Briefly about the history of the current undergraduate program of economics, it is worth mentioning that this program has been teaching to students for many years. A summary of the various stages of approval and review of this program is as follows:
A- The educational program in the field of economic sciences was approved by the former Cultural Revolution Headquarters on February 12, 1984
, and after being notified to the Ministry of Culture and Higher Education, it was implemented in all universities and educational institutions that were licensed to present the program.
B- After two years of the implementation of the mentioned program, the Educational Planning Committee of Economics and Business Affairs, in order to evaluate the efficiency of this program, started to ask the opinion of the implementing institutions. Based on the suggestions and amendments received from the mentioned units, the committee started revising the expert program and prepared a proposed revised program.
C- The recent program was sent again to all implementing educational institutions as well as to the planning and training departments of the ministries that were members of the Economic Council and to other economic institutions of the country such as the Central Bank and the Central Insurance of the Islamic Republic of Iran. After receiving the suggestions and comments of the mentioned institutions, the revisions of the Bachelor of Economics program started in October 1986 in the Educational Planning Committee and the received proposals were considered in the weekly minimum meetings from that date until November 1987.
D- The result of the above-mentioned measures was that some of the approved educational criteria were changed, among which we can mention the reduction of the educational units of the course from 162-166 to 142-146. A number of ministries and economic institutions in the country had requested the implementation of undergraduate courses in economics based on specialized fields.
Therefore, in this revision, it was necessary to use the experiences of implementing the program. Then, proposals that accelerated the achievement
of the program goals were added to the text of the program to meet the educational needs of the applicant institutions to provide specialized fields in a desirable way.
Finally, a revised curriculum for economics program was prepared with 145 units and six majors (theoretical Economics, Business Economics, Industrial Economics, Transportation Economics, Money and Banking Economics, and Agricultural Economics).
1-2 Purpose of the Program
The purpose of the Bachelor of Economics Program is to train experts who, by obtaining general and comprehensive information in the field of economics, can:
A. Enter public jobs in the governmental, cooperative and private sectors, acquire sufficient specialized skills to be able to work in professions that require professional technical expertise (like; banks, insurances, specialized commercial and financial companies, etc.).
B- Acquire sufficient scientific capacity to continue their studies in master's degree programs. According to the above three criteria, it seemed that offering a bachelor's degree in economics (without any major) could better meet these goals.
Undergraduate majors do not have such a specialized level, and as a result, undergraduates can not take specialized responsibilities in organizations and economic institutions with one of those majors.
These specializations can be offered in master's and doctoral programs.
Organizations with economic institutions in the governmental, cooperative and private sectors usually apply for economics graduates in job advertisements and, except in very rare cases, do not emphasize on a special major.
There may have been such emphases in recent years, but due to the expansion of master's and doctoral programs in economics, now the undergraduate program in economics is usually considered a general program, and therefore governmental and private organizations, directly offer short-term technical and vocational training courses for those hired.
Examining the top 20 universities in the world, it was found that the undergraduate program in economics is general and basically lacks specialization.
The curriculum of the undergraduate program in economics has been revised according to the following five criteria:
A- Strengthening courses related to Islamic economics
B- Localization and strengthening of courses related to Iran's economy
C- Strengthening the key courses
D- Introducing interdisciplinary courses in order to strengthen the analytical power of economics students
E- Introducing new courses in order to acquaint students with current issues in the regional and global economy
1-3 Program Curriculum
In the current program, the length of the bachelor's degree is four years, in economics in all six majors, and the educational system is unit base. All courses are offered in eight semesters.
Each semester consists of 16 academic weeks. Each theoretical unit lasts for 16 hours and each practical unit lasts for 32 hours during each semester.
The general details, curriculum and chapter of the courses that are currently defined and being implemented in the undergraduate program of economics for all of the universities of the country, are related to the three hundred and twentieth enactment of the meeting of the High Planning Council dated October 14, 1996.
In the new plan, the number of units has reached 140. In the new format, by removing the majors, the courses of this program are classified into three categories, which are basic courses, specialized and elective courses
22 units: Basic Courses
86 units: Specialized Courses
10 Units: Elective Courses