Hungarian Accreditation Committee International Advisory Board Meetig Welcome and introduction György BAZSA President, HAC Budapest, 23-24 November 2008

Welcome and thanks: we are grateful and proud. The meeting was prepared to our best knowledge and with high expectations. HAC: 15 years of continuous activity, without dramatic breaks, but with necessary changes Legal base: HE Acts: 1993 and 2005, some amandments Goverment decree(s) HAC’s own by-laws HE Act 109. § (1) HAC is an independent national body of experts assesing quality of education, research and artistic acctivities in higher education and examining the operation of the institutional quality development scheme.

National body but with international tradition of HHE and actual European context International elements: original formulation of the concepts non-Hungarian members at the beginning HAC membership in INQAAHE renewed membership in ENQA initialisation of CEEN personal participations in CRE/EUA audits ESG is accepted and applied in all respects and at all levels.

Some actual characteristics of Hungarian HE: Formally to many institutions (70), but reason-albe number (30) and size of state funded ones. Full implementation of Bologna process. Decreasing young population. Not enough state support. Various actions, even fight for students. Quantity and institutional interests are stronger than quality and common values. Quality culture in this situation is slowly developing: HAC has to function for a longer period before meta-accreditation could exist. High quality sector of HHE is at good and accepted international level.

Some (conceptual) characteristics of HAC (‘s activity) Quality is the duty and responsibility of higher education institutions. HAC contributes to this quality by formulating normes, requriments, conditions and evaluating (accrediting) their fulfilments. Result of evaluation is an „expert opinion”, legally not licensing. Except: doctoral schools. In case of „positive expert opinion” the Senate has the right of decision. In case of „negative expert opinion” the Senate has the rigth of appeal to the HAC’s Appeal’ Board or to the Minister.

HAC is strong in evaluation of input conditions (ex ante), less strong in the evaluation of the process and weak in output’s evaluation (ex post). HAC, like the Law on HE and itself the Hungarian HE is strongly „academic”, less „professional” oriented and determined. It’s true for quality aspects, too: we have academic conditions. HAC, like the whole HHE still has not enough strong bonds to the society at large: this is well ref-lected in the introduction of the Bologna process. One often critised character of HAC: domestic experts are representing institutional pro or contra interests. But there is no other expert pool in the country. HAC’s mechanism is the key factor.

International Advisory Board’s programme: we expect objective advises, including both positive evaluation and criticism, proposals for organisation, function, activity etc. Targeted could be HAC in general, at present its „action plan”, HEIs (if you have a „message”), stakeholders, including Ministry … HAC is ready to accept and to realise them in the near future.