Businesses, Universities Want More Partnerships

Hungarian universities and higher educational institutions, on one hand, and private businesses on the other, see bilateral partnerships as beneficial contributors both to the future labor market and research and development activities. So much so, that both sides want more cooperation.

By Christian Keszthelyi

Only one fifth of Hungary-based smaller businesses have any type of cooperation with higher educational institutions, despite the fact that both parties can reap many benefits from such an arrangement, according to a survey by the Budapest Chamber of Commerce (BKIK). More than half of the surveyed respondents believe that an intermediary would be needed to bridge the gap, despite there being demand on both sides according to large businesses and human resources leaders. The survey conducted deep interviews with research business managers and educational institution leaders, with the representation of almost 400 respondents from the SME sector. Educational institutions identified cooperation between education and the economy as the cornerstone for training professionals and strengthening R&D. The cooperation envisaged can take many forms, such as dual training, or internships at project laboratories. And while large corporations are often already present in partnerships, smaller companies are harder to find. A large majority of the respondents who are already engaged in partnerships tagged their cooperation as win-win situations, while more than 80% rated their joint work as four or five on a scale of five. Respondents identified supporting the labor market and creating social value as the most important factors.

Nevertheless, both parties do come across bumps on the road. Universities say that many gifted undergraduate students receive job offers “too soon”, so they cannot advance to post-graduate studies, which hurts societal values.

Furthermore, employers sometimes keep students working too long hours, universities reckon. Businesses can see their investment go to dust if the students they train actually chose rival competitors when they do enter the job market, while some students seem to lack motivation, placing a burden on their employers.

The interviews revealed that higher educational institutions would be open to any kind of help in establishing partnerships with businesses, as building bridges to industry is a lengthy and difficult process for which they need to allocate professional human resources, Gabriella Szányi, BKIK’s PR and marketing manager said. She added that businesses sometimes do not know how to initiate such partnerships, or whether they would classify as a worthy party for such cooperation.

The desire from both commerce and academia revealed in the BKIK survey seems to have struck a chord with the Hungarian government. A key element of its higher education and economic strategy is to create an environment where international and Hungarian companies, as well as universities and research institutes, can work together effectively, Prof. Dr. József Bódis, State Secretary for Higher Education, Innovation and Vocational Training, said at the end of September. He was speaking an event announcing that Knorr-Bremse Budapest and the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Informatics at Budapest University of Technology and Economics (Budapesti Műszaki és Gazdaságtudományi Egyetem or BME for short) had agreed to launch joint research and scholarship programs. Braking system developer and manufacturer Knorr-Bremse is supporting the faculty with a grant of HUF 25 million.

DEVELOPING SCIENCE, ECONOMY

Large international companies such as Knorr-Bremse guarantee that the members of Hungarian higher education such as BME can serve the development of science and the economy with increasingly wideranging economic relations, Bódis said when signing the cooperation agreement. This is of primary interest to Hungary, as the competitiveness of society can be sustained by the partnership between industry and education, he added. A closer relationship between the education sector and businesses can also support the emergence of more patents, an area where Hungary has been lagging in recent times.

Photo by Photographee.eu/Shutterstock “In Hungary, only 400-450 patent applications are submitted annually to the Hungarian Intellectual Property Office (HIPO), which is actually an improvement considering the downward spiral of the last years, but it is very important to draw enterprises’ attention to the fact that with different protections they could obtain further benefits (tax reductions, funds) and perhaps more importantly, they could hold more value on the capital market,” Gyula Pomázi, president of HIPO, said in August. He was speaking at a TUNGSRAM-ILEX Innovation Marketplace Powered By Corvinus-BIK event to introduced its achievements since its launch in the

beginning of the year. “Besides official activities and R&D and innovation qualifications, the primal goal of HIPO is education regarding the value of intellectual property and the Innovation Marketplace [a service that helps Hungarian enterprises create new national and international markets for their products through prominent R&D activity] is an excellent practical implementation of this idea. Therefore, the Hungarian Intellectual Property Office stands behind this initiative as the representative of the entire industrial property rights scene,” Pomázi added.

2020 has, in fact, seen a good number of partnerships between universities and businesses. The University of Szeged (SZTE), for example, agreed to set up a HUF 3.5 billion biobank to directly join the network of the Biobanking and

BioMolecular Resources Research Infrastructure - European Research

Infrastructure Consortium (BBMRIERIC), under an agreement the two parties signed in January. SZTE Rector László Rovó reckoned the agreement to be a recognition of the university’s high-standard of education and research activities.

Hungarian multinational oil and gas company MOL Group partnered with the Veszprem-based University of Pannonia to set up a National Research, Development and

Innovation Office-funded circular economy sustainability competency center, through an investment of HUF 4.8 bln. Water and waste management, recycling, sustainable energy sources, city development and environmentally-friendly tourism are at the forefront of the cooperation that also includes Hidrofilt, Netta Pannonia, Bay Zoltán Applied Research and Nagykanizsai Városfejlesztő as partners.

The Hungarian arm of GE Healthcare and the University of Debrecen launched a 10-year program in March focusing on research, while the two parties had already been engaged in talks relating to expanding the cooperation to climate and energy technologies, autonomous machinery and laser physics, Minister for Innovation and Technology László Palkovics said. In the first phase, 15 researchers will work on projects.

UNIVERSITY TRINITY

In April, three Hungarian universities, the University of Miskolc, the University of Dunaújváros and Szechenyi Istvan University (in Győr), completed a HUF 1.6 billion aluminum production technology development project, partnering with U.S.-owned Arconic-Kofem Mill Products Hungary. As a result of the project, which received a HUF 1 The interviews revealed that higher educational institutions would be open to any kind of help in establishing partnerships with businesses, as building bridges to industry is a lengthy and difficult process for which they need to allocate professional human resources.

bln European Union grant, Hungarian higher education will adopt Arconic’s research technologies.

The Ministry for Innovation and Technology, Semmelweis University, and Oncompass Medicine, a healthcare and biotechnology business, signed a partnership to support healthcare innovation, focusing on personalized diagnostics and therapies, and the application of artificial intelligence in medicine.

In June, as one of the many attempts to deal with the epidemiological factors of the COVID-19 virus, Austria’s Central

European Biotech Incubator and

Accelerator (CEBINA) and researchers at the University of Pécs started partnering up on creating a “thirdgeneration” vaccine, with forecast Phase I clinical tests to come in 2021

Photo by Guschenkova/Shutterstock The Hungarian arm of German giant Robert Bosch joined Knorr-Bremse in inking its own HUF 1.66 billion partnership with BME in June to develop better testing environments for self-driving vehicles. The project, which received a HUF 993 million grant from the National Research, Development and Innovation (NKFI) Fund, will end in 2023.

In August, innovation minister Palkovics said the government would support a research partnership between MOL, the local unit of German car maker Audi and the University of Szeged through a HUF 4 bln grant. The research hub, known as the Sustainable Green Chemical and Mobility Competency Center, based in the Szeged Science Park, will be set up by 2022 to support basic and applied research on crude oil and oil derivatives.

Additionally, in the framework of the 2020 Thematic Excellency Program, 27 universities and state research institutes will receive a combined HUF 43.9 bln from the NKFI Fund. When announcing the funding, State Secretary Tamás Schanda, of the Ministry for Innovation and Technology, said it would support 92 research projects.

Partnerships between educational institutions and businesses are the key to a better future, especially as our world is evolving so fast that universities must train professionals for jobs that do not exist at the time of enrollment.