The Changing Role of Hungarian Higher Education after the Change of Regime and its Relationship with the Development Potentials of the Regions of Hungary

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to provide an overview on the changing role of higher education on the local economic development of the regions of Hungary after the change of regime, with special focus on the rural areas. The level of qualification of the population has always been an important factor in economic development, thus the development of the human resource must be a key issue in development policies. The higher is the share of population with tertiary education, the higher is the potential for economic growth. As being lecturers in higher education for more decades, our aim was to see how the role and function of the higher education has changed over the years in Hungary and how important its role is nowadays by being a center for innovations, basis for spin-off and start-up businesses, by the establishment of regional research centers acting as knowledge-transfer hubs. We all know that SMEs, startups, businesses with innovative approach play a crucial role in the local economic development, not only in Hungary but in the whole European Union, so any measures targeting their development are inevitable, however, we need to see whether the human resource of the country at the moment is suitable for the establishment/development of such innovative enterprises. In this paper we examined the 18 counties located in the rural areas. We collected and analyzed the data for NUTS 2 regions and NUTS 3 level counties located in Hungary. Our aim was to see the tendency of the role of higher education in the development of rural areas.