Higher education towards knowledge wealth

Mészáros, Sándor

Keywords: higher education, knowledge economy, research university, modelling education policy

Sándor Magda initiated a debate in this journal about the problems of science and higher education in Hungary. This article seeks to contribute to the question of higher education, but with an international outlook. Naturally, the creation of a knowledge economy is a broader task than this; however, when developing higher education in the future we must bear in mind the creation and servicing of a knowledge economy.
The trustees of development in the direction of a knowledge economy are the research universities, whose Association has been established in Europe with the participation of 20 universities. Sándor Magda’s recommendation that 6-7 Hungarian universities should develop in this direction can be supported. In the course of this, the establishment of innovation centres with the aim of the practical implementation of scientific results should also be considered, the main possibility for these being in the university cities.
In the development of domestic higher education, modelling (specifically mathematical programming) can also play a role in so far as we wish to harmonise our scant resources (money, teaching capacity, language knowledge, etc.) with our economic goals. Of these, the maximisation of value added (GDP) and growth in employment can be considered in the first instance.