Hungarian Higher Education: the transition towards creating prosperity
Abstract
The central issue of this article is that of the impediments to creating prosperity within the context of Higher Education during the transition period in Hungary from a budget-commanded regime to market-oriented operations. Fairbanks (2000: 290) refers to prosperity not only as the means through which people can live a good life but also as ‘the enabling environment that improves productivity' and considers the purchasing power of a country per person'. It is seen as important as it affects living standards (e.g. malnutrition and poverty) and productivity levels. Thus dealing with the issue of prosperity also means dealing with poverty.
Fairbanks (2000) declared that each nation has a set of beliefs or mental model for creating prosperity which can change and suggests a 10 stage process, which is as follows: Decode the current strategy for Prosperity; Create a sense of urgency; Understand the range of strategic choices and inform them with analyses; Create a compelling vision; Create new networks of relationships; Communicate the vision; Build productive coalitions; Develop and Communicate short-term wins; Institutionalize the changes; and Evaluate and affirm the changes.
It is concluded that prosperity, despite being acknowledged as a good thing, is hard to achieve and a choice that leaders have to make when bearing in mind what exactly the consequences would be of such a choice. The article ends with a message to the Western world that it has a responsibility to consider and develop a change process relevant to local beliefs in developing nations with a constructive approach as a means to creating prosperity foremost in countries experiencing poverty, which Fairbanks mentions is a serious and all-too-common issue.
Introduction
Taking a macroeconomic perspective, this paper examines the process towards prosperity by applying the model developed by Fairbanks (2000) in the context of the change experienced by the education sector during the transition two decades ago of Hungary from a budget-commanded socialist regime to a market-oriented free market operation. Another issue to be considered is whether aspects of this change process could also be used on the micro level for the changes occurring in the merger of a higher education system.
The macro-perspective
When considering the macro perspective of the education sector during transition, Radó (2001: 11) declares, ‘The systematic vision of the transition in education … can be characterized as a move from a "command-driven" system to a "demand-driven" system'.
Change for prosperity is a global issue and in terms of the education sector, levels of prosperity during the transition are hard to gauge, however certain points are worth considering. The old fashioned education system had its weaknesses, but it also had its strengths such as high enrolment rates, universal and free enrolment, a generous supply of teachers and buildings and high levels of achievement of pupils in mathematics and science. In fact, this would be seen by many educators as a prosperous education system.
Fairbanks lists the steps as part of a process for change and each of these can be considered from the point of view of the educational sector in Hungary during the transition period towards a market oriented operation.
Step one: Decode the current strategy for Prosperity
When considering the strategy, a retrospective approach is required to find the strategy used in the period of transition in Hungary. According to Kornai (2000: 10), during the transition the strategy could be described as an organic one ? a strategy of organic development. This strategy is characterized by creating favourable conditions for growth in the private sector (mass ‘de novo' entry), privatization of most previously state-owned companies, companies having a ‘core' owner and hard budget restraints on companies. Through this, the private sector's proportion of gross production grew thanks to new private businesses and
??????????? This adopted strategy also has a sociological aspect according to Kornai (2000). It incurs a process of ‘embourgeoisement' with the development of a property-owning class.
??????????? Lipton and Sachs (1990) refer to a strategy of transition which involves the likes of ending excess demand, budget restraints, creating market competition and privatization, many of the steps in this strategy could also be applied to Hungary and can be seen in the organic strategy suggested by Kornai.
Step two: Create a sense of urgency
When considering Hungarian teachers and perhaps many citizens in Hungary during the time of transition, there were great expectations that change was on its way and Hungary was about to join with Western countries, which in turn gave expectations about achieving the same standard of living and freedoms that weren't available before. In this way, it could be said that there was a sense of urgency to become more market-focussed and ‘Westernized' rather than risk the potential danger of reverting bank. In reality this would be a long process, but the expectations served as a means of creating this sense of urgency referred to by Sachs. The main impetus for this sense of urgency could be attributed to the people themselves rather than the government or the private sector although each had a role to play to some extent.
There are two other factors mentioned by Radó (2001) which could be seen as promoting a sense of urgency for change in the educational institutions in Hungary. The first is that of the reform of the governance system, including the rapidly emerging NGO sector and the appearance of private education. The second factor being a key impetus for public educational institutions is to consider becoming more competitive and, in order to achieve this, more market-oriented (Rado, 2001: 21).
Step three: Understand the range of strategic choices and inform them with analyses
When faced with the transition, a number of approaches from the West for education were considered in Hungary. The main four put forward by Radó (2001: 21) were as follows:
The same for all. This approach is based on social equality with a focus on systematic outcomes like graduation rates. The reform strategy is to maintain centralization and privatization is opposed.
Quality for those who deserve it. This is an elitist approach and the strategy promotes centralization and liberalization at the same time.
Quality for those who can afford it. This free market approach presents a view of a decentralized and liberalized education system, with full support for privatisation.
Quality for all. This approach supports decentralization and liberalization, but with only some support for privatization.
However, when considering the strategic choices available, there are a number of other factors that need to be considered. First of all, the educational sector in Hungary during the transition is making a change from a "command-driven" system to a "demand-driven" system. This factor is key when considering strategy and policy in Hungary. Appendix 1 shows the differences between the two systems according to Radó (2001: 24). The other factor is that of Hungary's culture and attitudes to reform. Any strategy on a macro-level should consider Hungary's specific situation not only economically and politically, but also culturally ? adoption of a strategy based on Western approaches without such consideration would have a nueva camiseta del america 2011 much smaller chance of success. In fact, educational reform in transition countries was carried out in a very different way to that of Western-European countries (see Appendix 2).
Step four: Create a compelling vision
When considering a compelling vision to promote change, it is worth noting that during the transition period there was a significant momentum for change in Hungary (Rado, 2001: 22). Such a momentum for change is rare and an important foundation upon which a compelling vision was built. From a macro point of view, the increased freedom experienced at the time of transition lead to a vision that was more aware of the surrounding environment as people experienced freedom to travel, labour mobility and freedom to trade nueva camiseta del america 2011 with any markets abroad, just to name a few examples.
In the case of transition of the education sector, the vision was the demand-driven system retained many of the characteristics existing in education in developed countries in the West and for many, the compelling vision was the countries in the West with higher standards of living, high productivity and free markets.?
Evidence of a compelling vision was referred to by Kaufman and Paulston (1991: 11), Hungarians saw their nation as a leader in change and this pride in change not reinforces the fact that Hungarians had a compelling vision for change but also that the task of communicating the change was much each (see step seven).
Step five: Create new networks of relationships
It has been argued before that productive coalitions between management of educational institutions and companies would result in greater relevance of courses to company and students needs, both of which can be considered as forms of customer in terms of receiving the skills or skilled labour or knowledge supplied by educational institutions, however this such coalitions have yet to be implemented to a level comparable with that of many market-oriented Western countries (Chandler, 2008).?
New networks and were made and existing ones strengthened between Hungarian HEIs and educational institutions in the West and as Western HEIs such as those in the UK were becoming increasingly market-oriented in the early nineties this also created a further impetus for Hungarian HEIs to do likewise.
Step six: Communicate the vision
When considering reform in education, there are a number of key stakeholders that need to be considered as requiring communication of the vision: Teachers, Management, students (and students' parents), the Government and to some extent, the public at large.
Whilst it could be argued that various types of media could be used to achieve this, it seems that in education, change is brought about in a different way. According to Radó (2001) reform in transition countries often takes place as either a "top-down" or "bottom-up" process. From the point of view of the thesis, this would mean that in the educational institution, change can be achieved through the medium of the teachers as they are right in the middle of the process, whether it is "top-down" or "bottom-up". Thus teachers appear to feature as the main stakeholder to whom the vision should be communicated and, as reforms are generally initiated by the government and then communicated to educational management, the top-down process seems to be the most likely way to achieve this.
As teachers are central to communicating the vision and the vision during the transition (as mentioned in step four) is a Western system, the views of teachers towards the Western system during the time of transition need consideration.? According to the research of Kaufman and Paulston (1991: 9), out of eighteen teachers interviewed in their research, the majority favoured a Western focus with only one indicating a need to concentrate on national uniqueness and national pride. Another finding of this research was that in Hungary the rural population tended to favour nationalism and the urban population had a more European focus (Kaufman and Paulston, 1991: 10). When communicating the vision it would seem that for teachers, the vision was already on board to some extent, however for educational institutions in rural areas there would have been opposition from local residents (including students and parents). From Fairbanks' process for change, this would imply a greater need to communicate effectively the vision in rural areas with potential opposition to change in Hungary.
