The Future Studies: A Neglected Necessity in Iran’s Higher Education System

Dear Editor-in-Chief Future studies are the systematic study of possible, probable, and preferable futures and include the worldviews and myths that underlie each. In the last years, the study of the future has moved from predicting the future to mapping alternative futures to shaping desired futures at external collective levels and inner individual levels alike (1-5). Futurology is an interdisciplinary field that aggregates and analyzes trends with lay and professional methods to compose possible future. It includes analyzing the sources, patterns, and causes of change and stability to develop foresight. Around the world, the field is variously referred to as future studies, future research, strategic foresight, futuristics, future thinking, futuring, and futurology. Future studies and strategic foresight are the most commonly used terms in this academic field (6, 7). This field can be considered a branch of social sciences and an extension to history. Future studies seek to understand what is likely to continue and what could plausibly change. Part of the discipline thus seeks a systematic and pattern-based understanding of past and present and explores the possibility of future events and trends (8).

The Future Studies: A Neglected Necessity in Iran’s Higher Education System Keywords:

Futures Studies , Higher education , Iran