New Agri-informatics MSc Curricula in the Hungarian Higher Education

Abstract

The University of Debrecen in Hungary has already 30 years’ experience in computing,informatics training in agriculture. The education programs in agri-informatics have beencontinuously changed in various accredited training programs. The different levels of ITknowledge and education programs / subjects exist in different levels, such as VocationalEducation, BSc, MSc and PhD levels. The five years long Informatics Agricultural Engineereducation program has been introduced in the 2002/2003 academic year. During the past decadethe reform of higher education was started to implement according to the Bologna declaration.The new Hungarian Higher Education system (the Bologna system) was introduced in the2006/2007 academic year. From this date two-tier (separate bachelor-and-master-level) programswere introduced on the 3 + 2 model in certain disciplines. The agro-informatics BSc in 2006 anda new MSc education program in 2013 have been accredited. The enterprises and farmers in theHungarian agro-food sector and governmental offices demanded to start this course becausethere is digital gap between the sector of agro-food and other sectors, especially between ruraland non-rural areas. This statement is justified by numbers of our researches and PhD thesis. TheBSc course gives practice-oriented knowledge and competences, the MSc gives deeplytheoretical ones. The rate of the core informatics and applied informatics subjects is about 40 %of the subjects groups (agronomy, informatics, economics and management, law and publicadministration). This paper gives information about the development roadmap, results, demands,the accreditation process, the content of the new MSc agri-informatics programs and thechallenges.