Accreditation of doctoral schools in Hungary Judith Négyesi Program Officer Hungarian Accreditation Committee

ENQA/ARACIS March 2009 Judith Négyesi2 Putting in perspective Population: 10 million HEI: 70 (25) Doctoral schools: 167 Students in HE: 380,000 Teachers in HE: 22,400 Faculty members in doctoral education: 9,200 Core members in doctoral schools: 2,280

ENQA/ARACIS March 2009 Judith Négyesi3 Doctoral students and the degrees issued # of doctoral students 7,784 7,153 # of new doctoral degrees1,012 1,059

ENQA/ARACIS March 2009 Judith Négyesi4 Legal framework Act CXXXIX of 2005 on HE Government Decree 33/2007 on Doctoral Education Detailed rules set forth in the Doctoral Regulation of the HEI

ENQA/ARACIS March 2009 Judith Négyesi5 Legal criteria of the doctoral training HEI must provide master training in the given branch of science or art The organisation of doctoral studies, the assessment of PhD/DLA students and the tutoring and conferring a doctoral degree are overseen by the doctoral council of the HEI. Doctoral studies take 36 months (i.e. six semesters), the workload of the students is at least 180 credits. Obtaining a doctoral degree: separate procedure, 2yrs on average by the doctoral candidate

ENQA/ARACIS March 2009 Judith Négyesi6 Legal criteria of a doctoral school Organised in a given discipline (133) or cooperating two disciplines (32) or three (2) Minimum core members: 7 A coherent training and research programme Announced research topics for the students Working documents: by-laws of the school, QA procedures and a complete, up-to-date homepage Approval by: HAC, HEI Senate The HEI has notified the Education Authority

ENQA/ARACIS March 2009 Judith Négyesi7 HAC criteria for the core members Formal criteria: professors under 70, others under 65; may be only in one doctoral school at the same time; topic announcement, dissertation supervisor activity, and scientific degree. Personal performance criteria: at least 0,5 (if supervised by two supervisors) supervised student who successfully acquired a PhD degree, continuous scientific productivity which is indicative of professorial quality, a reasonable amount of citations (strongly dependent on the discipline) and that the persons research field fits into the profile of the school.

ENQA/ARACIS March 2009 Judith Négyesi8 HAC criteria for the doctoral schools Out of 7 core members: 4 full professors For new and up to 3 year-old schools: at least 3 core members should have successful supervisory activity. New schools should enrol at least two students a year in their first three years Working documents should include a C-SWOT analysis Working documents be thorough and informative The research programme must be based coherently on the profile of the members of the school.

ENQA/ARACIS March 2009 Judith Négyesi9 The electronic doctoral database Decided in 2007 by the Hungarian Doctoral Council (HDC) and the HAC and located on the HDC website Data uploading and updating by authorized persons: over 6,000 academic staff and 200 coordinators of the schools and universities. A living database, updated on an ongoing basis Contains some 200,000 items of data, incl. links to homepages of schools and participating individuals. The volume of data differs by the level of accessibility User guides for academic staff, coordinators of the schools and the external evaluators of the HAC

ENQA/ARACIS March 2009 Judith Négyesi10 Core members data in the database Name, , phone Age, position, scientific degree University and doctoral school Research area Number and names of doctoral students supervised, completed and conferred PhDs 5 most important publications in the last 5 years An additional 5 most important publications overall Impact factors and number of citations from the last 5 years and altogether HAC help: a detailed guide of eligible publications

ENQA/ARACIS March 2009 Judith Négyesi11 Doctoral schools data in the database University The HAC identification number, name of the school, year of establishment and operation; degree conferred (PhD/DLA), discipline(s) Head, number of scholars, from those, the supervisors and core members Master programmes of the given university recognised as entrance requirement Number of doctoral students supervised Passed PhD examinations and PhDs graduated in the school, broken down to all scholars Links: dissertation topic announcements, by-laws, training programmes, QA procedures

ENQA/ARACIS March 2009 Judith Négyesi /2008: a comprehensive pilot evaluation The HAC investigated to what extent core members and doctoral schools complied with the criteria laid down in the government decree and requirements of the HAC. This was necessary since the new law also required universities to revise their doctoral regulations to comply with the law. No legal consequences Assessments: complies, partly complies, does not comply

ENQA/ARACIS March 2009 Judith Négyesi13 The 2009 accreditation procedure All the 157 schools accredited before 2008 Based on two anonymous peer-reviews by discipline in the database The relevant disciplinary committee of the HAC will assess core members and schools HAC Doctoral Committee reviews all proposals formulated HAC Plenary meeting makes decision No paper but only PCs and projectors are used during all the steps of decision-making

ENQA/ARACIS March 2009 Judith Négyesi14 Accreditation decisions Core member: complies/does not comply Doctoral school: accredited/not accredited Decisions automatically appear in the database Conclusion for QA: The publicity of data and evaluation stimulates doctoral schools and their members to produce high quality results

ENQA/ARACIS March 2009 Judith Négyesi15 THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION!