CIHES Working Paper No.13.

Central European Higher Education Cooperation Conference Proceedings
Editors: József Berács – Gergely Kováts – Liviu Matei – Pusa Nastase – Mátyás Szabó
April, 2017
ISSN 2060-9698
ISBN 978-963-503-641-7
145 pages

The proceedings can be downloaded (in English) here.

Additional studies were published in the Hungarian Educational Research Journal (2017/1)
The 2nd CEHEC conference page is available here.


This volume comprises selected papers presented at the second Central European Higher Education Cooperation (CEHEC) conference held in Budapest on June 16-17, 2016.


The event was part of a series of conferences organized by the CEHEC project, an initiative of the Center of International Higher Education Studies (CIHES) at Corvinus University of Budapest and Yehuda Elkana Center for Higher Education at Central European University (CEU). CEHEC has multiple goals. First, it aims to create a forum for sharing experiences and good practices, for discussing challenges, progress and opportunities for academic collaboration, and for policy discussion in the region’s higher education. Second, it builds a professional network that can provide support to relevant stakeholders. Last but not least, the series of conferences that emerged from this cooperation seek to provide more visibility to Central and Eastern Europe in the global higher education landscape and recreate the attractiveness the region had in the 1990s for researchers and policy makers.
The CEHEC conference series intends to bring together researchers and practitioners who share a continuous interest in promoting both the scholarly study and the practical advancement of higher education in the Central and Eastern European region.


The second CEHEC conference, entitled “Distinctiveness of Central and Eastern European Higher Education,” aimed to reflect on current trends and key issues in the region’s higher education. Conference participants debated whether certain topics and issues are particular to the region’s higher education or are part of global trends. Some of the invited keynote speakers represented higher education systems from outside the region and brought an external, comparative perspective to current topics in Central and Eastern Europe. Jonathan R. Cole, former provost of Columbia University and member of the CEU Board of Trustees, who opened the conference with his keynote speech, discussed the future of research universities in the US. His latest book “Toward a More Perfect University” was launched at the conference.


This volume presents two of the keynote speeches and six papers presented at the conference. An additional five conference papers were selected to be published in the Hungarian Educational Research Journal, and are available for free at the website of the journal (herj.lib.unideb.hu).
The detailed programme of the conference and information about the authors is enclosed in the Annex.
We hope these papers will be a useful and enjoyable read, and will inspire readers to join future conferences and other initiatives organized by the Central European Higher Education Cooperation (CEHEC).


Published studies:

Additional studies were published in the Hungarian Educational Research Journal (2017/1):