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The civil activity of higher education students and the correlation of their chances of dropping out
141-156Views:48Our research question is that volunteering and civil organization membership of higher education students are able to protect against dropping out from higher education or even divert from effective learning and hinder persistence. The positive or negative effect of civil activity of students is measured by quantitative multivariable method, and the question is whether there is there a clear effect of civil activity on persistence, after allowing the effect of other socio-demographic variables. The results show, that civil activity of students neither protect against dropping out nor hinder persistence in our sample. There were several variables which affected civil activity, and the good relationship with parents is protecting the most against dropping out from higher education, but the fact, that civil activity is neither divert from effective learning, and nor hinder persistence means that it is important to improve civil activity of higher education students due to its’ several positive effects.
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Studying further in higher education as a human capital investment
134-144Views:68In our paper, we examine the motives of further studies in higher education among higher education students, as well as how socio-demographic variables modify these motives. Our research method is quantitative. We used a research database gathered in the historical Partium region in 2014 (N = 1792). The theoretical backgrounds of our research are the human capital theory and Bourdieu’s capital conversion model. Based on ten motives of further studies, we made a cluster analysis and examined the relationships of these clusters and the socio-demographic background variables. Our finding is that the most important motive of further studies among students was expanding knowledge. Therefore, the motive of getting higher wages in the future, which is the central aspect in the human capital model, proved to be of minor importance. Based on the capital conversion theory students wanted to gain cultural and social capital when they decided to study further, as both can be profitable for them in the future. However, while the motives of further studies were affected by the social background of students, contrary to our hypothesis, financial motives were not more important for those students coming from disadvantage backgrounds than for other students
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The Career-building effect of volunteering in higher education
146-160Views:70Nowadays the motives for volunteering are changing among higher education students, and
besides traditional altruistic motives, career-building motives also appear (the acquisition
of work experience and professional knowledge, professional development, networking,
the presentation of voluntary work in the resume). In this paper, we use data from a survey
conducted in five Central and Eastern European countries (N=2,199) to examine through linear
regression analysis the factors affecting the strength of career-building motives and to analyse
through a logistic regression model the determinants of whether or not volunteering is related to the field of study. Our hypotheses are formulated based on the literature. Our results show
that career-building motives are more pronounced among women and students who have a
close relationship with external friends outside the university, study outside Hungary, and study
something other than engineering, computer science or science. Voluntary work is more likely to
be related to the field of study among teacher education students, students with an unfavourable
financial situation, those who study in Romania, and those who have a close relationship with
faculty. -
Foreign students of the medical faculties in Pécs and Debrecen: the choice of the university and acculturation process
22-43Views:50With the headway of globalization and knowledge-based economy, international student mobility is promoted as the main indicator of the internationalization of higher education. In Hungary the number of foreign students – similarly to global trends – shows an increase, representing a significant economic interest. Besides this, the international students make a growing impact
on the development and the economic and cultural life of the cities where the universities are based. In our empirical research, we analyzed international students at the Medicine, Dentistry and Pharmacy foreign language programs of the University of Debrecen and the University of Pécs with the help of personally requested anonymous, self-completed questionnaires (n=602). The
self-developed questionnaire focused on three issues: the motivation of the students, their satisfaction with the university and the process of their integration. The research was conducted in the spring semester of the academic year 2015/2016 at both universities.
Based on the results it can be stated that from the perspective of medium- and long-term policy development of the university and the city, it is indispensable to survey the motivations and satisfaction of the students arriving to Hungary due to international student mobility as well as to facilitate their integration. The general medicine major of the University of Pécs and
that of the University of Debrecen are very popular among foreign students but there are significant differences in their choices behind which we can discover the different cultural background of the matriculated students and this factor determines their personal choices and their later plans. Concerning the difficulties at the beginning we can state based on the results that for the
students of the German programme the different language medium and the local bureaucracy mean a bigger challenge, while for the heterogeneous community of the English programme contact building with the tutors and the integration into the socio-cultural medium mean more difficulties. Concerning the integration we can state that from the point of country of origin the integration means a little less challenge for the more homogenies student community of the German programme than for the heterogeneous community of the English programme behind which most probably the stabilization of the acculturation process can be trailed. -
Family plans and career plans among higher education students in the field of social sciences based on a pilot study in Eastern Hungary
71-93Views:68Our paper explores the family and career plans of social sciences students at Hungary’s second largest university based on a questionnaire-based pilot study. Nowadays, careers include more than the traditional vertical promotion within an organisation, as seen from the emergence of the self-directed “protean” career type, which prompts organisations to adapt to individuals’ values, attitudes, and own career definitions. In addition, the Kaleidoscope Career Model sets out that individuals adapt their career goals to their life stages. Thus, students’ career and family plans matter to prospective employers. Our results show that a modern self-directed career type has emerged among students, for whom it is a priority to meet their own expectations. In several cases, starting a family is preceded by career goals. Furthermore, despite the “feminine” nature of social sciences, our pilot study shows that male students in the field still tend to conform to traditional gender roles regarding the importance of family and career. Our research implies that prospective employers need to adapt their HR strategies to young people’s family and career plans. Moreover, organisations should support students in gaining relevant work experience and in achieving their subsequent career plans.
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The Rethinking the public in Higher Education: Communitarian Engagement vs. Service-Based dependency
79-108Views:41There 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.
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Factors that influence matechoice among college women
136-158Views:31The centre of the study is the influential factors of female students in higher education. As a
research question, does the institution of marriage continue to be a prominent place among
female students in higher education as a planned relationship? And, does a person with
a higher education level of education develop a relationship with a higher educated person,
therefore achieving homogeneity of relationship? Thereby the choice of coupling is presented in
addition to the examination of marriage, cohabitation and postponement mechanism, beyond
the factors influencing partner selection, which are analyzed in a qualitative research of tenpersons. Factors include age, place of residence, origin and religion, separation from parenting,
educational attainment, material capital and labor market situation, planned duration of the
relationship and effects of the information age. -
Environmentalism of university students in relation to their materialism, life satisfaction, views on politics and pandemic
70-97Views:70Recently, 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. -
The transition between higher education and work
203-215Views:41One indicator of the labour market situation of recent graduates is the length and quality of the post-graduation period. Today, the path from higher education to the labour market is increasingly complex and flexible, with many people already working during their university or college years, while others find it takes months to find a job after graduation. The transition therefore starts during the period of study, before graduation, in the form of internships, work placements during training, or even voluntary work. Nowadays, the delay in finding a job has led to the status of unemployed recent graduates who are no longer studying but not yet working. However, the recent graduate unemployed behave differently from other unemployed groups, as they have generally not yet worked full-time and are supported by their families.
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College and university students’ attitudes towards democracy in Hungary
47-69Views:32The existence of education for democracy has positive impact on citizens’ political knowledge
and the identification with the democratic values. In the process of civic education, the
universities and high schools play an important role. Many scholars argue that the high schools
have a civic mission to serve a public good or the university is the civic mission itself. To examine
democratic citizenship among high school and university students we use a dataset composed of
three surveys (2011/2012, 2013, 2015) of 4800 Hungarian students. We build on the literature
about the empirical and theoretical framework of democratic citizenship to answer the question
if 25 years after the collapse of communism we can witness the emergence of a new generation
of democrats in Hungary? Have young people successfully come to terms with their countries' authoritarian past and developed a commitment to democracy as a system of rule? Are they
ready to defend it in the face of challenges? Based on the empirical framework of citizenship we
derive a number of significant lessons from the Hungarian case, with important implications
about the ability to teach the norms and responsibilities of democratic citizenship in the world’s
emerging democracies. -
Alternatives of how to prepare for the future labor market
146-160Views:42What happens if among the members of a society and among the smaller and larger units and groups making up the society trust and confidence seems to be disappearing at once? What happens if confidence reposed into each other fall victim to social differences as well as to the economic / cost-of-living boxing of modern information society? How to stop the crisis symptom that seems to be developing this way and which is shown in the fragmentation of communities?1 With other words, is it possible to “stick again together” a community or even a whole society started to disintegrate? The questions, even if not so characteristically phrased, provide sociologists actually with the scope of understanding our modern, individualistic world (Habermas 1994). Gusfield (1975) depicts dichotomy of community and society in a way that we should interpret community as a pervading, significant contrast. By now literature seems as if it was only be able to picture the changes taking place in the images both of the society and community describing them by even more pronounced, contradictory processes. The changes that send messages on the disintegration of categories and frames becoming insecure instead of the security and integration quasi missed by Habermas. It also seems as if—quasi as an answer given to this process—occlusion/seclusion both on the part of community members and the various communities from the seemingly unknown and insecure changes were more intensive (Légmán 2012). We intend to construe these phenomena on the next pages, but due to extension limits without the need for completeness of social interpretations. We want to do it with the help of mainly one dimension: value preference through the example of a given society, namely the Hungarian one. Thus we get to the stability and the solidarity of the members of the smallest unit of society, one which accepts and expresses various value preferences, the family.
From time immemorial, one of the crucial questions of mankind has been what the future has in store for us. The future, however, has remained unfathomable up to this day, and even future studies promises only as much as prognosticating what is likely to continue and what will plausibly change in the world. Thus, no wonder, that already the first “real” economists of the 18th century (Adam Smith et al.) considered the creation of the future model of labor economy as a challenge. At the present era of modern labor market, this task is closely connected with the future status of labor market since in a consumer society income acquired by work forms the basis of satisfying needs (Ehrenberg – Smith 2003, Galasi 1994).We are not saying anything new by stating the fact that the demand for labor force is determined by new places of work and that an ideal supply of labor force must be adaptable to the requirements of demand. To meet requirements and to be adaptable is possible only if we are armed with the necessary competencies and capital (Hodges – Burchell 2003, Bourdieu 1998). The question, to what extent students in higher education are prepared for changes in the demand for labor force, arises at this point. What can young people expect on the labor market in this ever changing world? What kind of job opportunities and work conditions are there for them, and how much are they prepared to face these changes?
