The Accelerating Roles of Higher Education in Regions through the European Lifelong Learning Initiative

This article assesses the network development and promotion of the learning region model in HEIs in the framework of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), focusing on quality, partnership and social equality in the Hungarian context. It argues that the learning city-region model can be used and put into practice in many different ways for a new learning climate to occur, as in the case of the Pécs Learning City-Region Forum. However, there are parallel ways to implement the model for HEIs. The first is a purely economically centred one for those HEIs that reflect a reformed social identity to serve mainly employability, economic productivity and innovation through education and research in post socialist countries. The second is more holistic, reflecting not only education and research, but also making use of innovation based on economic and social partnership and networking in local, regional, national and international contexts. The article elaborates on the opportunities for this model as one into which Hungarian HEIs may develop.     

Truth in numbers? Emancipation,race, and federal census statistics in the debates over Black mental health in the United States, 1840–1900

To the keen observer of American political and medical history, a disturbing set of debates surrounded the sanity of free Black residents of the United States of America after the publication of the controversial 1840 census returns on race and insanity. This article analyzes how the census became a battlefield where physicians and other commentators fought over—and thus shaped—various political meanings of Black insanity before and after the American Civil War, up until the 1890s, as the South underwent a massive political and social transformation, from slavery to emancipation. It also highlights the arguments raised by authors such as James McCune Smith and Ramón de la Sagra who attempted to disprove the returns shortly after their publication, and whose arguments contributed to efforts to combat scientific racism.     

On the Meeting of the Moral and the Aesthetic in Literary Education

For millennia it has been discussed whether literature appropriately can or should be used in education for a moral purpose. Taking as a premise that it can actually be educative and not merely moralising, we tackle the case made against such use, based on the claim that it would be perverting the aesthetic nature of literature as a form of art, as it would be instrumentalised. Given that this claim is based on a dichotomy between an aesthetically educative approach and a morally educative approach to literature, we examine how warranted such a formulation of this dichotomy is. We argue that, at least on some occasions, those two educative approaches to literature—the aesthetic and the moral—can actually be mutually reinforcing in such a way that aesthetic appreciation will suffer if the moral is not deeply examined with both mind and heart, and vice versa. This does not mean, however, that this relation of mutual contribution will always obtain in a neat way. It may actually be the case that just in a few cases, and only if carried out in a pedagogically appropriate manner, it will be correct to use literature with a morally educative purpose.     

The Mathematics Laboratory in Engineering Studies

This paper describes the setting up of a Mathematics Laboratory which could help to complement the theoretical teaching of this subject by presenting real situations similar to those the Engineering student wilt encounter in future.     

Coping with methods for delineating emerging fields: Nanoscience and nanotechnology as a case study

Proper field delineation plays an important role in scientometric studies, although it is a tough task. Based on an emerging and interdisciplinary field nanoscience and nanotechnology– this paper highlights the problem of field delineation. First we review the related literature. Then, three different approaches to delineate a field of knowledge were applied at three different levels of aggregation: subject category, publication level, and journal level. Expert opinion interviews served to assess the data, and precision and recall of each approach were calculated for comparison. Our findings confirm that field delineation is a complicated issue at both the quantitative and the qualitative level, even when experts validate results.     

Expectations of higher education students: a comparison between the perception of student and teachers

Higher education institutions are ever more interested in the development of tools that enable them to evaluate and manage the expectations of their students with the purpose of attracting and keeping them satisfied. This research compares what the faculty believes the students expect from a higher education institution with the expectations of students entering higher education. A quantitative study was performed with students from a higher education institution through the application of a questionnaire covering 32 different expectations. The perceptions of the faculty were also collected through the same questionnaire, suitably adapted. The results of the investigation demonstrated differences in thinking between students and professors, with 19 variables representing student expectations that showed statistically significant mean differences. In 13 variables the students had greater expectations than the faculty believed, while for six variables the faculty indicated higher expectations than the students declared. Identifying the existence of this gap in knowledge will allow the higher education institution to adjust its services to the expectations of students, leading them to greater satisfaction.