The Hungarian Ministry of Education and Culture is pleased to invite you to its upcoming Bologna Seminar, entitled Equality in a Knowledge-based Society - How to Widen Opportunities? Best Practices in National Action Plans, organized on 10-11 November, 2008 in Budapest, Hungary.
The social dimension of the envisaged European Higher Education Area aims at the equality of opportunities in higher education in multiple terms: those of access, participation and successful completion of studies, studying and living conditions, guidance and counselling, financial support and student participation in higher education governance. It also implies equal opportunities in mobility when it comes to the portability of financial support, removing barriers and providing incentives.
This Bologna Seminar's purpose is to contribute to find the means for the reform of higher education to reflect the diversity of our societies, by encouraging discussion, research and development in all areas of the activity of higher education institutions. The Seminar will also seek to promote the access of a wider community to the main ideas of the Bologna Process and to review the efforts made to implement its equal opportunities policy.
The three working groups of the Seminar will concentrate on issues like the dimensions of the participation of groups with disadvantages among students according to recent researches and statistical data; diverse methods, methodological dilemmas and policies concerning ranking and strategies, along with best practices intended to increase the representation of the socially disadvantaged in higher education, that is, the presence of ethnic minorities, migrants, persons with disabilities, women and students brought up in poor and socially excluded families.
The Seminar will be completed with recommendations outlined and agreed upon by its participants.
You are welcome to register for the Seminar through the homepage of the Ministry of Education and Culture (
http://www.okm.gov.hu/social_dimension) where further information will also be available. Registration opens on 29 September 2008.
We very much look forward to seeing you in Budapest.
Dr. Károly Manherz
State Secretary for Higher Education and Science
Ministry of Education and Culture, Hungary