Opportunity Inequality in Accessing Higher Education and Presentation of Equity Promotion Model to Achieve Sustainable Development: A Case Study of West Azerbaijan Province in Iran

Abstract This study was aimed to investigate the inequality of opportunity of access to the higher education centers and to present a model of reducing inequality of opportunities and to administer justice and fairness in order to achieve a sustainable development among the 17 cities and towns of West Azerbaijan Province, Iran. This research was a descriptive-analytic and survey type of study in nature. The participants included 890 pre-university high school students who completed a set of questionnaires eliciting their perceptions on opportunity inequality in accessing higher education. Moreover, documents adopted from the responsible governmental bodies on this topic were analyzed. The collected data were analyzed using Pearson correlation coefficient, cluster analysis, path analysis and neural networks by means of Topsis, SPSS, and Excel softwares. The findings showed that there is inequality of opportunity of access to the higher education centers in cities of West Azerbaijan. Based on the path analysis, admission and individual-family indexes had the most and the least impacts on inequality of achieving higher education, respectively, among the cities of West Azerbaijan. Moreover, the neural networks model showed that the education indexes were the most important and the individual-family indexes were the least important ones in predicting the opportunity of accessing higher education in these cities. This study reveals that a three-componential model (namely, education, admission, and family-individual) along with their sub-components could be the basis for achieving education for sustainable development.