Iranian Journal of Medical Education

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Introduction: In recent years, ministry of health and medical education has approved a regulation for accepting top students for postgraduate courses without entrance exam that leads to many critiques and discussions. This article addressed students’ and teacher’s view about this regulation. Methods: This was a qualitative study at school of nursing and midwifery, Isfahan University of medical sciences. Data collection was done through semi-structured interviews. Undergraduate students in 7th and 8th semester (who were not eligible for acceptance without entrance exam), postgraduate students and faculty members were selected using purposeful sampling. Data saturation was achieved with 8 interviews. Results: 3 main themes and 11 subthemes were obtained. They were Justice (selecting only one outstanding student, inappropriate selection criteria, little differences and big outcome, ignoring differences between universities, deserve to be accepted) Ethical problems (destructive competition, bad communication with student who is accepted, negative attitude toward classmates) knowledge improvement (encouraging students in getting knowledge, optimized application of free higher education). Discussion: The most frequent mentioned theme was injustice. However, decision-making for accepting students should be according to the public justice and higher education goals, and it must lead to a perfect policy and decision-making. There is no a standard and obvious strategy for student selection in higher education institutes, and it is hoped to consider the best strategy.

Keywords: higher education, Master of Science, justice, university entrance exam, Iran

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