Universities,the Information Technology Challenge,and Open and Distance Learning in Central and Eastern Europe

The educational needs of eastern and central Europe can be met by distance education methods. The need to reform and to expand open and distance education possibilities led in 1990 to the founding in Budapest of EDEN, the European Distance Education Network. After 1990, the proponents of open and distance education were able to expand the scope of their activities as the result of expanding possibilities provided by the rapidly developing information and communication technologies. The pedagogical possibilities offered by these technologies are described with an emphasis on their democratizing tendencies, their ultimate inexpensiveness in terms of the total costs of different types of higher education, and their commercial possibilities. The setting up of the Distance Education Centre of the Technical University of Budapest is presented as a case study. Governments and institutions must find the best ways to use the information and communication technologies to integrate traditional higher education with open and distance learning techniques so as to offer the best possibilities at regional, national, and institutional levels.     

Political decision-making in socialist education: a Hungarian case study (1958–1960)

The subject of this article is a definite shift in socialist pedagogy: the implementation of polytechnic education in the late 1950s. First, the Soviet model is presented, then the analysis of its Hungarian introduction shows the decision-making process thoroughly, from the first steps in February 1958 to the publication of the ‘Principles’ in September 1960, which affected subsequent discourse about the so-called ‘school-reform’. The study is based on the reports of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party archives, mainly the files of the Political Committee, because this body designed and determined the characteristics of the new era in Hungarian education. Silence dominated the afterlife of the reform after 1965 – in retrospect, it was a failure – and the situation has not changed since. Although the archives are now open, the actors in the decision-making process, and their different interests, have not yet been investigated by scholars.     

心理和身份,档案和社会——中欧案例

文章以中欧国家为例,探讨了社会环境对档案工作者心理和身份的影响,强调档案工作者有责任对心理和身份及社会环境加强了解,从而避免档案工作落后于社会进步给档案工作本身带来伤害.     

ACADEMIC EXCHANGES: EXPERIENCE AND TRENDS

The coincidence that much of Eastern Europe is democratizing at the same time that much of Western Europe is moving towards greater integration gives the universities in both regions the chance to profit from both phenomena and to train their graduates in ways that will enable them to contribute to their further development. One of the best forms of preparation is student mobility. A listing of the perceived priorities and aims of student mobility is followed by a brief statement of the engagement of the Technical University of Budapest (TUB) in mobility and exchange activities.     

HIGHER EDUCATION REFORM AND WESTERN ASSISTANCE IN HUNGARY: THE TEMPUS EXPERIENCE

The TEMPUS programme was started in the early 1990's in a unique political climate in eastern European countries. It was a very considerable innovation as a complex and efficient higher education programme, targeted at the real needs of the recipients. As no higher education strategies existed at that time in the region, TEMPUS was not able to support comprehensive structural changes, at least in Hungary, in the university sphere. Its unique success in terms of efficiency can be traced back to the presence of the European dimension, the professional management of the Programme, and the very appropriate emotional challenge it has presented both in the East and the West.     

HUNGARIAN ACADEMIC CO‐OPERATION WITH THE EUROPEAN UNION AND THE UNITED STATES

Academic co‐operation between higher education institutions in Hungary and those of western Europe, on the one hand, and those of the United States of America, on the other, are compared. Hungarian co‐operation with western European higher education, particularly the European Union countries, has been far more developed than that with the United States. The greater success and scope of co‐operation with western European higher education institutions is attributed to the comprehensiveness of the TEMPUS Programme of the European Union countries and its careful and well‐planned responses to the problems of the central and eastern European region. However, Hungarian higher education could gain a great deal from more intensive co‐operation with American higher education. Efforts should be made to encourage such co‐operation including the greater involvement of American higher education institutions in TEMPUS projects.     

Spreading Informatics in Educational Technology

Abstract

The dissemination of ideas and use of education technology needed a breakthrough, and this paper looks at how this is being achieved.     

Changes in archives’ philosophy and functions at the turn of the 20th/21st centuries

In the last 20–30 years the archives in Europe have undergone tremendous changes. Although the archives have always been ever changing but the changes have accelerated in the 1980s. Nowadays the archives have different requirements, way of thinking and values, they act and react differently as 30 years ago, i.e. they have a different philosophy. The new philosophy can be described in a few words: popularisation, transparency, openness, market approach, media culture and information-centricity.Archives have had basic functions such as to ensure rights, to provide historical sources, to participate in administration and to disseminate culture. The contents of these functions have also changed by the end of the century.Changes are determined by society. In my article I would explore how the dominant ideas and values of the Western world such as equality, freedom, democracy, free market and fair competition, as well as the societal and economic implementation of these ideas such as respect of human rights, transparency, globalisation, IT revolution, market approach, media culture, alienation and individualism have compelled the archives to change their philosophy and functions.