As is well known, at the extraordinary and closed meeting of the Senate of the University of Debrecen on January 21, 2021 – 65 yes, 0 no, with 3 abstentions – supported the transformation of the university to a foundation.
The Facebook group called 21 Professors from Debrecen published an open letter stating that, contrary to the announcement, there was no extensive and intensive consultation on the plan, purpose, reasons, advantages and disadvantages and consequences of perhaps the most significant change in the history of the university. Senate members did not receive, and thus did not share, documented information with their constituents, although this is the foundation of the university, but not just, university democracy.
They argue that the university community could not have known in advance either the Institution Building Plan for 2021-24 or the model change strategy.
“Transferring our university to a state foundation form – although it doesn’t seem logical in many ways (changing some laws, the budget increase now promised would have helped a lot in its current form of operation) – might even be acceptable to most university citizens, but if it’s almost a secret, without discourse, to the exclusion of the general public, and in a matter of days, there is a strong suspicion that the primary goal of transformation is not to raise the standard of education and science, ”they write, and finally add that they lack“ critical and constructive discourse ”from the model change process
– the 21 professors, namely: Béla Baranyi, György Bazsa, Etelka Farkas, István Fábián, Attila Gáspár, György Gát, István Hoffmann, Ferenc Joó, József Kónya, Katalin Kövér, László Losonczi, Gyula Maksa, László Nagy Noémi, Orosz István, Páles Zsolt, Polónyi István, Rurik Imre, Sóvágó Imre, Tóth Imre, Tóth Valéria, Várnagy Katalin
(The signatories are all doctors of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, six are academics.)
debreceninap.hu
