Education paper by Nagy-Zekmi, Silvia
“End the University as We Know It”: Global – Tech – Academe
Type of Abstract (select):Abstract (max. 250 words):
The title echoes Mark Taylor’s article that appeared in The New York Times about the reasons of the current crisis of universities. In this paper I will address one aspect of this crisis, the technological leap that landed us in the information age and its consequences for higher education. With the ubiquitous mooc-s (massive open online courses) and ever more scarce funding higher education is sliding into the digital realm. As education budgets are continuously cut in Hungary and 16 members of the European community(1), digital education is a constant issue of discussion, as it was in the 2013 global summit of graduate education held in Budapest http://www.gradschool.cornell.edu/deanknuth-attends-global-summit-graduate-education-hungary titled “Graduate Education and the Promises of Technology.” New technological media challenge the traditional, grammar-centric concept of intellectual activity (i.e. the superiority of written language as opposed to spoken language), as scholars are confronted with a broad diversity of cultural expressions that cannot simply be reduced to words (written or spoken). “Computer technology is creating a new kind of public, a cyberculture with all its utopian and apocalyptic possibilities”(2)
Higher Education in Hungary:
In Hungary the population that participates in higher education has quadrupled since the system change in 1990 (http://mta.hu/data/cikk/13/10/36/cikk_131036/BeracsJozsef.pdf) in spite of the fact that birthrates are in steady decline and that the costs of higher education now are split between the state and the students. Changes in the financing and structure of higher education in Hungary, in addition to the Bologna process, whose “framework for common efforts to reform and modernize […] higher education systems” (Bologna Process Implementation Report 2012) are two main factors that influence the benefit of higher education to an individual. I will elaborate on the strength and weaknesses of the current system in Hungary contextualized by borderless education opportunities in the EU. I will elaborate on several aspects of the implementation of the Bologna accords and how they affected the nature of higher education in universities, such as ELTE, JATE, and Corvinus. Moreover, I will address in my paper the academic crisis of higher education to which I alluded earlier, namely the ransformation in our understanding of what constitutes “knowledge” and how it affects the system of higher education in Hungary.
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1 Garben. Sasha. “The Future of Higher Education in Europe.” ww.lse.ac.uk/europeaninstitute/leqs/leqspaper50.pdf
2 Tofts, Darren and Murray McKeich. Memory Trade: A Prehistory of Cyberculture. Newark, NJ: Gordon & Breach
Publishing, 1998. p. 4.
Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Silvia Nagy-Zekmi is a professor of Hispanic and cultural studies, and director of the Cultural Studies Program at Villanova University (Philadelphia). She publishes on a wide array of subjects ranging from Latin American, postcolonial and cultural studies, in addition to literary and cultural theories. Her latest publications include: Global Academe: Engaging Public Intellectual Discourse (2012) and Truth to Power: Public Intellectuals In and Out of Academe (2010 -with Karyn Hollis) Perennial Empire (2011) and Colonization or Globalization? (2009 - with Chantal Zabus), Moros en la costa: Orientalismo en America Latina (2008), Paradoxical Citizenship: Edward Said (2006, 2008); the award winning Democracy in Chile: The Legacy of September 11, 1973 (with Fernando Leiva, 2005), Le Maghreb Postcolonial (2003). She is currently working on a manuscript titled: The Postcolonial Condition: Eurocentric Discourses in Latin America. More information: www.wix.com/snzekmi/cv , or www19.homepage.villanova.edu/silvia.nagyzekmi/