Research Projects – Future of Higher Education

What we research

Our main focus is on the challenges and opportunities concerning the Future of Higher Education.

We are currently at the end of a 5-year-long research project covering the future of business education. As part of this project, we investigated what social roles highly ranked business schools attribute to themselves and what kind of future they envision in their communication. Furthermore, we explored the most influential trends and biggest challenges facing the HE sector and its institutions, which we channelled into a scenario-building process. As a result, we published our scenario report in 2022, which outlines four possible futures for higher education. Based on this, we are now running scenario workshops and getting feedback from different stakeholder groups within the university. These stakeholders can be leaders, lecturers, researchers of education and students. This approach gives us a more detailed picture of how these groups relate to the future not only on a cognitive but also on an affective level. We have got support from ‘Research projects initiated by young researchers’ fund of National Research, Development and Innovation Office (Hungary) between 2018-2023 (FK127972).

We have started a new 4-year research project about agency in higher education – from individual to global level. The aim of our research is to map how the different actors of higher education portray their social roles, and through that, their sense of agency. In the research we will focus on global/macro and meso/micro levels of the higher education system in order to compare each levels’ discourse on the matter. To achieve this, we are planning to analyse international and Hungarian higher education institutions’ vision and mission statements (global/macro level) and carry out systems mapping and action learning processes with hidgher education teachers and students (meso/micro levels). With the latter approaches, we will also be able to map the shifts in individual sense of agency. This research is supported by National Research, Development and Innovation Office (Hungary) between 2022-2026 (K142227).

A new research project has started in 2023 led by Anita Kolnhofer-Derecskei, Regina Reicher and Karina Szászvári. The scope of this project: in May 2020, the ILO released a report where the ILO urged to investigate how “young people are facing multiple shocks from the COVID‑19 crisis, which could lead to the emergence of a lockdown generation”. The pandemic restrictions can be treated as a career shock, that massively affected that generation who just newly graduated from university and entered their early career stages in the labour market. This research aims to determine how COVID-19 restrictions affected the subpopulation (generation) of the cohort of early career workers who experienced a lockdown during the transition from university to the labour market. The COVID-19 pandemic transformed job-seeking habits and HR practices globally, but the restrictions have also had benefits and positive outcomes. Best practices and new skills (gained during the pandemic) are going to observe that might be not just interesting but also useful for peers and society. Following an extensive bibliographical (scoping and systematic) literature review, HR experts are going to be interviewed and focus group analyses will be conducted with the young subjects.

In 2023, another research group joined us, the cooperation connecting the three faculties of the university: its members are, on the one hand, three lecturers from the KVIK Department of Business Languages: Dr. Réka Asztalos, Dr. Alexandra Szénich and Dr. Ágnes Pál, who teach 3 different professional languages (English, German and Spanish), as well as teaching skills development subjects, as well as the three members currently and previously working in OKFI: Dr. Rita Koris (PSZK), Dr. Márta Folmeg (KKK) and Dr. Imre Fekete (KVIK). In the forefront of their common interest is innovation in educational methodology, with particular attention to student autonomy, soft skill development, student and teacher digital competencies, internationalization, artificial intelligence literacy, educational development, and teacher development. Their research topics are: skill development, soft skills, teamwork, autonomous learning, measurement of learning outcomes, digital competences in education, internationalization, professional course management in English (EMI), artificial intelligence literacy, educational development and teacher development.

Between 2017 and 2019 we had a research project focusing on the perceptions related to students’ cheating. The research began in 2017 in Hungary and was based on analysis and modelling of interviews. We were investigating the opinions and perceptions of the affected groups – students and teachers – concerning the causes and effects of students’ cheating.

Between 2014 and 2016 the project ‘The Future of School: Business Education in Hungary in 2050’ was led by Zsuzsanna Géring and Gábor Király. The research goal was to explore how students and teachers active in business education think about the future of business education, what future perspectives they have and prefer and what paths and actions they propose for realising future goals. The multiple research method consisted of a participatory backcasting process.

Beside the ongoing research projects, we are actively engaged in research organising activities. We are members of the ‘European Universities – Critical Futures‘ project which connects European Higher Education Research Centres and researchers with the leadership of CHEF from Aarhus. Previously we were participating in the project entitled “Global Essay Mills Survey” (GEMS), we were editors of the special issue „Future of Higher Education” of the journal Futures. Furthermore, the leader of FHERC, Zsuzsanna Géring (PhD) was board member of ISA RC07 Futures Research.