HIGHER EDUCATION COLLABORATION
AND PROGRAM INNOVATION

Program objectives: to support the formation of complex humanities and social science education programs, innovative in terms of their content and methods, based on extensive and close collaboration between individual educational and research units. The Foundation set out to contribute to “cross-dialogue” between people working in the same fields of education and research in Hungary and abroad, thus bringing the standard of higher education up to international norms. The Foundation resolved to support multi-partner collaborative programs whose content and methods are up-to-date but which find it hard to secure funding in the traditional organizational framework at present.

Program description: the educational units, i.e. departments, sub-faculties and educational institutes of Hungarian higher educational institutions could submit proposals once a year for a period of no more than three years (i.e. in 1999 the time horizon was the 2001/2002 academic year). The program plan had to be produced for three years (providing a detailed breakdown for the first academic year) and may be revised annually.

The application had to be submitted by one main applicant – a department, sub-faculty or educational institute that established a partnership with at least one (but if possible more) educational or research institution in Hungary or abroad. The partner units may belong to the main applicant or to the higher education institutes (universities or colleges) of other partners, provided that the main applicant and the partners are not directly linked through their organizational structures. For instance, cooperation between a sub-faculty and a department within it was not considered a real (newly established) partnership for the purposes of the application. However, only the main applicant was required to be an educational unit, while the partner could be a research unit, e.g. the appropriate research team of an academic research institute. The main applicant had to undertake to coordinate the program, and a statement of acceptance by the head of the higher education institution (dean or rector) had to be obtained. If a foreign partner was involved in the program a statement by the head of department/head researcher abroad was sufficient.

Application scheme elements:
applicants were obliged to include among the activities the element a) from the list below and at least two other elements in the first grant period (academic year). The applicants accepted from the first academic year could be supplemented by further elements in the second and third periods, and the elements selected first could be replaced by other elements.

a) Education in Hungary: fees for courses and tutorial activities
b) Invitations to foreign authorities to hold courses and lectures, and exchange of Hungarian and foreign teachers
c) Writing and publication of course notes, textbooks, text compilations, and other teaching aids, academic publications, book publishing
d) Study tours within Hungary and abroad, professional training courses
e) Attendance of conferences in Hungary and abroad
f) Foreign student exchange programs
g) Infrastructure development and procurement
h) Other (every other request that did not fit into the above framework, but was closely related to the objective)

The maximum grant available in the first academic year was 2-10 million forints, in the second, 2-6 million forints, and in the third, 2-4 million forints.