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• The Rethinking the public in Higher Education: Communitarian Engagement vs. Service-Based dependency

  79-108

  Gyöngyvér Pataki

  Views:

  214

  There has been structural change in higher education due to the impact of institutions built or maintained in private public partnership. The aim of the paper is to give a deep insight into how these institutions could accomodate or shape the public higher education sector’s discouses, spaces, procedures. The research used mixed method to approach this complex question from a multidisciplinary perspective (sociology, education). Within this framework two residential halls were chosen and 17 interviews were carreid out with all relevant figure of the management. Due to the analytical tools of Maxqda 12 the qualitative results will be presented giving an insight into the differing discourses and practices of the public vs. private-public management. Based on the analysis of the managerial interviews it is safe to state that the public management struggles to balance a communitarian, democratic discourse and objectives with the requirements of efficiency and accountability. The presence of private-public management unintendedly shapes its public counterpart. The institutional analysis revealed that due to the swiftly changing institutional and policy environment residential halls are forced to be efficient leading to difficulties in managerial legitimacy and questions concepts such as community, conformity, commitment and action. Under the circumstances of increasingly growing institutional service-based dependency and control, academic consumers, institutions and students alike, paradoxically avoid integrating into macro groups. As a consequence, the institution encourage and educate student into a particular type of citizenship based on communication and consumerism rather than consensus.

• The Social Ecology of Rural Schools: Family-Community-School Relationships in Cross-National Perspective

  76-103

  Ibolya Czibere

  Noémi Loncsák

  Magdolna Simon

  Views:

  120

  Rural small schools are situated at the intersection of educational and social inequalities, where students’ learning outcomes and overall development are closely tied to the quality of relationships among families, schools, and local communities. Although extensive research has examined parental involvement and social capital, relatively few comparative studies have explored the social ecology of rural small schools-particularly the interrelations between family milieu, community embeddedness, and institutional autonomy. This study addresses this gap through a systematic review of empirical and theoretical research published between 2010 and 2024. The analysis draws on Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological model, Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital, Coleman’s concept of social capital, and Epstein’s typology of parental involvement. Findings indicate that the family-community-school nexus exerts a multi-level and interactive influence on children’s cognitive, emotional, and social development-directly through family practices, indirectly via the quality of parent-school relationships, and structurally through local social capital and institutional resources. A cross-national comparison reveals that while rural schools are universally positioned within structures of educational disadvantage, variations in cultural norms, community organization, and policy frameworks crucially determine whether family and community resources mitigate or reinforce these inequalities. The study concludes that the success of rural small schools depends not on the quantity of resources but on the quality of relationships. Trust, reciprocity, and partnership within the family-school-community triangle are essential foundations of rural resilience. Policy interventions are most effective when they strengthen the community-based and family-centered functions of small schools, embedding parental involvement as an integral element of the learning process.

• Environmentalism of university students in relation to their materialism, life satisfaction, views on politics and pandemic

  70-97

  Ferenc Mónus

  Tamás Béres

  Flórián Sipos

  Views:

  327

  Recently, an increasing focus has been made on studying environmental problems and the
  related social phenomena. Understanding the environmentalism and its influencing factors
  in the case of higher education students can greatly help the preparation and identification
  of sustainability policies and educational practices in higher education institutions. In this study, we investigated environmental attitudes and pro-environmental behavior of
  students at 17 Hungarian universities as a function of a number of hypothesized influencing
  factors. These included materialistic values, life satisfaction, political views, and views on the
  Covid-19 pandemic. According to our results, these were all related to environmentalism. More
  environmentally conscious students were less materialistic, less right-wing in their political
  views, more satisfied with their lives, and also differed in their views on pandemic issues. Beside
  a weaker impact of environmentalism and political views, life satisfaction was largely influenced
  by the relative financial situation perceived by respondents.