Content beyond Vocational Skills

The goals of this paper are to reveal the process of institutional effects in higher education and to identify those components that can be classified as being beyond vocational skills. The topicality of this analysis is embedded in the transformation of universities, which can create a new framework for students’ socialization process. Two different methods were used during our research: a questionnaire with students (N = 1502) on a nationwide sample in Hungary and 31 interviews with lecturers. According to our empirical findings, the effects of higher education are very complex, and vocational elements are not the only content that is transmitted. Students can perceive the components of moral effects ata high level, and general knowledge has acquired great importance, too. With the help of the lecturers’ interviews, we can identify the most important aims of the teaching process, which extend beyond the vocational elements, and at the same time, the barriers to and possibilities offered by this transmission.