A new international programme, offering a joint degree, is now part of ppk’s portfolio of programmes

Students in the Master in Research and Innovation in Higher Education joint MSc (MARIHE) master’s programme, which is a collaborative effort of the Danube University Krems and the Faculty of Education and Psychology (PPK) of ELTE, can pursue their studies in several European and Asian countries. At the end of their studies, students obtain a joint degree that is mutually recognised by all partner universities.

Project MARIHE, which aims at the quality reformation of higher education institutions and the improvement of the higher education management skills of the participating students, was launched around one and a half decades ago. Supported by the Erasmus Mundus programme of the European Union, the fundamentals of the MARIHE study programme were co-developed by four partner institutions: Danube University Krems (Austria), University of Tampere (Finland), Beijing Normal University (China) and Osnabrück University of Applied Sciences (Germany). In 2018, ELTE PPK (led by Gábor Halász) and the Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology (India) joined these four institutions. Until now, PPK has participated in the consortium via its English-language Educational Science MA programme by organising and coordinating the Learning and Teaching specialisation, with the students eventually obtaining a double master’s degree from both the University of Tampere and ELTE.

In future, however, the Learning and Teaching specialisation will split from the Educational Science MA programme and will continue as an entirely independent programme, allowing for a less restricted development. Students will spend the first two semesters of the two-year-long training programme in Austria and Finland. They will then go on an Asian study trip in their third semester; finally, depending on their chosen specialisation, students will finish their studies in Germany, Finland, Austria or Hungary. The thesis work will be conducted in the institution that receives the student for their last semester. At the end of the programme, students will obtain a joint degree that is recognised and acknowledged by all participating institutions as their own. The first students planning to graduate from the specialisation offered by ELTE in this new construction will arrive in Hungary in the autumn of 2026.

Zoltán Rónay is the programme coordinator and the Erasmus Mundus project leader in Hungary; from PPK, Orsolya Kálmán is the coordinator and an instructor of the Learning and Teaching specialisation, while other participants in the programme are László Horváth as instructor and Judit Saád as administrative assistant.

The cover picture shows the representatives of the partner universities in front of the Danube University Krems building in 2023.