“Debrecen Business Service Centers (DBSC) Kerekasztal, comprising nine individual companies and more than 4700 employees in Debrecen, primarily aims to improve the level of acknowledgment and recognition of the business services sector. In addition, the roundtable aspires to establish an even closer cooperation with the educational institutions of the immediate region where such specialists and professionals are trained. For this reason, the members consider it important to develop and popularize the educational and career paths leading into the business services sector as well as to promote the issue of language learning that is closely related to the former,” said Patrícia Becsky-Nagy, Head of the Department of Finance at the Faculty of Economics and Business of the University of Debrecen, at the online signing ceremony of the agreement.
Rector of the University of Debrecen Zoltán Szilvássy shared the following thoughts about the agreement. The system of business relations at the University of Debrecen is fairly unusual from the aspect of Hungarian traditions since the leading university representatives working in the various industrial clusters are regularly reelected by the industrial partners. Besides, the structural unit whose duty is to oversee most of the work focusing on the organization of corporate contacts at the University of Debrecen in addition to the basic teaching responsibilities is the institute Mérnöki és Üzletfejlesztési Innovációs Intézet (MÜZLI) [Engineering and Business Development Innovation], which is basically made up of business people.
Zoltán Bács, Chancellor of the University of Debrecen added a remark about the framework provided by MÜZLI, through which a variety of corporate business leaders had, for a number of years, delivered presentations (mostly in English), which continued to prove to be very popular with the students.
“Signing this cooperation agreement will provide a good basis for an even more highly structured system of connections,” he said. The Chancellor also mentioned how the University of Debrecen would be involved in what is dubbed the model shift in higher education. According to him, as soon as it is going to be implemented, the ties with the corporate sector will be especially important, which is also true about the ever more intensive inclusion of corporate experience into education and the business-like operation of the university in a number of different areas.
Endre Ascsillán, Head of MÜZLI and Vice President of General Electric Hungary, underlined that the former traditional life and career paths would be no longer available. In young people, in his opinion, it is essential to foment and incite the entrepreneurial spirit and an open, receptive attitude in order to make sure that they would thrive and prosper in a multinational corporate environment.
“The close cooperation between the university and the different actors on the industrial, business and economic scenes can absolutely provide the framework through which we are able to transfer the necessary knowledge for this solution,” he said.
Éva Kissné Nyéki, a project leader of Debrecen BSC furnished the following details. The roundtable that was established three years ago has added more than 30 different programs to local education, through which more than 1800 students got a chance to familiarize themselves with the opportunities provided by the business sector, thus obtaining a special kind of knowledge. In fact, the companies that this organization comprises employ more than 4700 people in Debrecen.
“At these companies, it is not just the pleasant work environment that is attractive but also the possibility of working with world-class level efficiency. No wonder that they continue to appeal to a lot of young people eager to develop and learn. The agreement to be signed today means that we wish to work even more closely with the University of Debrecen. Our chief objective is to hand them up-to-date and state-of-the-art information, which can prove to be helpful in finding a job and building a career path in the world of business,” she said.
She hastened to add that, in order to make sure that these goals get properly implemented, Debrecen BSC Kerekasztal currently offered three business courses (one each in English, French and Hungarian) and an accredited teacher training program at the University of Debrecen. In their programs, the most important feature is to help students and would-be teachers and instructors find out about and attain the components and elements of knowledge required in this specific sector. Apart from the above, they also arrange workshops and open days so that the students could obtain profound first-hand and up-to-date knowledge through real-life examples straight from the experts and professionals of the business services sector in order to get to know the peculiarities of the labor market.
Beyond the currently running programs, during the course of implementing future projects, the roundtable and the university intend to host competitions, joint workshops and informative events as well as develop learning materials and related surveys for the advancement of strategic forms of education.
At the end of the signing ceremony, the floor was taken by the representatives of the member companies “around” DBSC Kerekasztal: 4iG, BT – British Telecommunications, Diehl Aviation, EPAM, Flowserve, Deutsche Telekom IT Solutions, NI, transcosmos, and United Call Centers, who then all affixed their signatures at the bottom of the agreement.
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