Suchergebnisse

Northern Hungary is one of the most disadvantageous regions of Hungary and the European Union; "keeping force" is extremely week. The regional spatial inequalities – despite the national and EU convergence program – have been increasing year by year. The social and economic situation of the region shows negative trends. Negative features of the migration processes are manifested in the candidates' choice for tertiary education has increased in the region in the past three years parallel with the proportion of those who are not on site, but primarily in the Central Hungarian region to continue their studies. An intensification of the negative trends is experienced in the economic processes both in jobs and the structure and performance of the local economy in respect of per capita income. The transition from the nineties has decisively influenced the social and economic processes and the status of tertiary education institutions and their constantly changing role in the region. The role of education has become a key point of their activities as financing of the sector encouraged the institutions to increase the number of students and training offer, while R&D as form of cooperation in the economic sphere overshaded. Nowadays and over the past decade the increasing demand to transform their educational profile has increased in accordance with the social and economic situation of the region, adjusted to the catch-up and development opportunities of the region.

The social functions of tertiary education have gone through considerable changes with the transformation of economic environment in the more than two past decades. In the decade after the political transformation the number of students in the tertiary education increased more than threefold. Personal interests, social needs and the demands of the society lay different claims to the performance of this sector. The needs for structural transformation of the tertiary education system are connected with the development of social and economic processes. The changes of legal regulations determining the operation of the sector are induced by these factors, which refer to the autonomic characters of the public participants. Tertiary education possesses a specific market environment each of whose characters – both the supply and demand sides – strive for the enforcement of self-regulatory mechanisms.

Every university was funded in different historical periods with particular feature, particular political system, particular proprietory structure and particular economic background, which characterised the particular era. The historical antecedents considerably influenced the situation and role of the institutions as well as the course of their development. Although they had common features but their spatial projections are very dissimilar. In the 19th and 20th century Hungarian history – in the periods of economic integration with the modification of political system and transformation of the social background – the economic and social functions of tertiary education underwent considerable changes, which started to accomplish by the second half of the 20th century and the early 21st century. To moderate regional disparities, European and Hungarian regional development policy considers particular importance to the economic structure of the regions and their potential to be reformed, which is one of the corner stones of compatibility. Considering the more and more diversifying functions of universities, the question is, which factor is more significant; tertiary education or the relation between the sectors of national economy. The possible correlations we presented through the economic structure and the transformation of tertiary education functions of the integration periods.