KAPTAY, George, BENKO, Z. Maria

Hungary-3515, Miskolc, Egyetemvaros, University of Miskolc,

Dean’s Office of the Faculty of Metallurgical Engineering

e-mail addresses: fkmkap@gold.uni-miskolc.hu , rekkdzbm@gold.uni-miskolc.hu

The history of the Hungarian higher education on metallurgical engineering started at Selmecbánya (Schemnitz in German or Banska Stiavnica in Slovakian), in 1735, which was the second technical institute of the world. Since then each year new students were enrolled on this branch, although the “Academie” has been transferred first to Sopron, and then to Miskolc. Today the Faculty of Metallurgical Engineering is the part of a real “universitas”, including 6 faculties, half of them being not engineering faculties. There are more than 10,000 students in the campus of the University of Miskolc today. The Faculty of Metallurgical Engineering is the smallest one with its 300 students.

The political changes, followed by the industrial crisis of the late 80-s and 90-s in Central-Eastern Europe, especially in Hungary, lead to the decreased interest of young people in studying metallurgy. In order to make our educational system more attractive for potential students, its structure has been re-organized in 1992. The experience gained during the last 7 years are discussed in this paper, and the re-organized, new educational structure is presented.

The history of curricula and educational structures of the branch of metallurgical engineering from Selmecbánya to Miskolc has been reviewed elsewhere (see References). Let us make a brief overlook on the recent history of the curricula and structural developments at our Faculty.

From 1972 to 1992 the training in the branch of metallurgical engineering was organized in the following 4 sub-branches:

Metallurgy (including metallurgy of ferrous and non-ferrous metals)

Foundry

Metal Forming

Physical Metallurgy

As one can see from Figure 1, since 1970 the number of students had gradually decreased on the Faculty, due to gradual economical and psychological changes in the Hungarian society. The minimum in Figure 1 is situated around the time, when the political changes in the country, coinciding with the worldwide crisis of the metallurgical industry were taking place. As a result of the new political course, the politics of higher education was modified as well, and the so called “normative financing” of different branches of higher education all over the country was introduced by the Ministry of Education. The “normative financing” system meant, that all the expenses of the given faculty had to be covered by the amount, transferred from the Ministry proportional to the number of students learning in the given year on branches taught at the given faculty. Therefore the decrease in number of students might have lead even to the disappearance of the Faculty of Metallurgical Engineering at the University of Miskolc, and therefore in the whole country, as the Faculty suddenly appeared to be a “deficit enterprise”. Fortunately, by that time the non-technical faculties and branches have been established at the University, which helped together with the large technical Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, and do help even today to the smallest faculty of the university to “survive”. On the other hand, the leaders of the faculty realized that changes in the structure should be made in order to stabilize our faculty from the purely economical point of view.

Two strategies by the leaders of the Faculty were chosen as ways of survival. First, two new branches were introduced and accredited at the Faculty: in 1989 the branch “Engineer-Physicist” had been started, as a joint-venture with the Eötvös University Budapest, while in 1993 the branch “Materials Engineering” had been started. As one can see from Fig.2, these two new branches helped to increase the total number of students to the level of about 300 by 1996. It should be also pointed, that the branch of Materials Engineering, although introduced later, appeared to be more successful in attracting students, compared to the branch of Engineer-Physicist.

Figure 1. The number of students at the Faculty of Metallurgical Engineering at the University of Miskolc between 1970 and 1998

Fig.2. The number of students studying in the 3 different branches of the Faculty of Metallurgical Enginnering of the University of Miskolc between 1988 and 1998

As the second way of “survival”, the structure of the branch of metallurgical engineering had been developed as well, in order to provide knowledge also in more fashionable disciplines, which were thought to be more attractive to the students. As a result, since 1992 the students attending the branch of Metallurgical Engineering could choose among one of the following sub-branches:

Metallurgy of ferrous metals (MFM)

Metallurgy of non-ferrous metals (MNFM)

Foundry (F)

Metal Forming (MF)

Power Engineering (PE)

Automation (A)

Environmental Protection (EP)

Quality Management (QM) – introduced one year later, in 1993

The number of diplomas issued in the above sub-branches are summarized in Table 1.

Table 1. Number of diplomas issued at different sub-branches

of the branch of Metallurgical Engineering between 1995 and 2001**

* abbreviations of sub-branches see above

** number of diplomas issued between 1999 and 2001 are estimated based on the number of students on the 3^rd – 4^th - 5^th years of their study.

The following conclusions can be drawn based on Table 1:

1. The division of the sub-branch Metallurgy (as it used to be before 1992) into two sub-branches (Metallurgy of Ferrous Metals, and Metallurgy of Non-Ferrous Metals) appeared to be not approved according to students choice. Taking into account, that a sub-branch was actually started in those years only, when at least 3 students choose it, the independent existence of these two sub-branches is not sensible, as the average number of diplomas issued is 0.9 and 2.3 per year.
2. The introduction of the new, “fashionable” sub-courses (Power Engineering, Automation, Environmental Protection, and especially Quality Management) indeed attracted a lots of students, and helped to stabilize their number at the branch of metallurgical engineering. More, than 70 % of all students between 1995 and 2001 get their diplomas in metallurgical engineering actually not in “producing” metallurgical sub-branches, but rather in the “complementary” sub-branches. This practice, however, has been widely criticized by the managers of the metallurgical plants after 1995, as they felt to be mislead by the “certified diploma on metallurgical engineering”, actually issued in sub-branches other, than metallurgy, foundry, or metal-forming. According to their opinion, the young engineers were well prepared in fields of Quality Management, or Environment Protection, but were not really familiar with the metallurgical technologies, in which these complementary sub-branches should have been applied.
3. Even in a classical sub-branch with wide job-opportunities such as Foundry the number of diplomas is very low (4 per year as an average), being obviously much lower than the more, than 100 foundries nation-wide would need. The reason is the competition between the basic, classical sub-branches and the complementary, fashionable sub-branches within the branch of metallurgical engineering.

The new management of the Faculty (appointed on 1^st November, 1998) has developed a new educational structure, optimizing the positive and negative effects of the introduction of the new sub-courses in 1992. The new structure has been approved by the Council of the Faculty in February 1999, and will be introduced from 1^st September, 1999. Due to differences in the two structures, the previous educational structure will be applied for students starting their 4^th and 5^th years in September 1999, while the new structure will be applied for younger students, only.

The new educational structure was invented to reach the two following goals at the same time:

1. according to the requirement of the “market of our product”, i.e. the metallurgical industry, each young engineer with the certified diploma of metallurgical engineer has to get his diploma on one of the “producing” sub-branches, i.e. on metallurgy (re-joined ferrous and non-ferrous), foundry, or metal-forming,
2. according to the “fashions” in the todays society, we have to use the complementary sub-courses both for attracting students, and also for providing them with a complementary knowledge that can be used in their later career, in case they cannot find appropriate jobs in the metallurgical industry in the period of 40 years after they are graduated (a great responsibility to the managers of the Faculty).

The above two contradictory requirements to the new educational structure was optimized by introducing a 2-level specialization, in the following way:

1. first, in the 5^th semester, the students can choose among one the “fashionable”, complementary courses, called “specialties” – the timing is dictated by the goal to attract young students,
2. later, from the 7^th semester, each student has to choose among one of the “producing” sub-branches, to meet the requirements of the industry.

The new educational structure is shown in Table 2, while the new schedule is shown in Table 3. As one can see from Table 2, some new complementary specialties have been introduced, and now the students can choose one of the following specialties:

1. Specialty on Materials Information: provides the students with special knowledge on basics of computer science and information science. The students get familiar with a lot of software and data-bank created and used by metallurgists world-wide. They become able to create their own models to model metallurgical phenomena and processes.
2. Specialty on Automation: provides the students with deeper knowledge in electronics, process control, microprocessor-techniques, to be applied to the solution of practical automation problems in any metallurgical and non-metallurgical plant.
3. Specialty on Energy Management: provides the students with information on raw materials to be used to produce energy, and also on the technologies of producing, transforming and utilizing energy. A special emphasis is given to questions of generating heat, designing and running high-temperature furnaces and burners.
4. Speciality on Waste Management: provides the students with information on the trends of the world-wide waste- and scrap-markets, and on the technologies of treating and utilizing industrial wastes, with a special emphasis on the metallurgical methods of decontamination of industrial wastes and scraps.
5. Specialty on Marketing: the students of the branch of metallurgical engineering get a good knowledge of metallic materials. On this specialty they are trained to be able doing marketing, selling, transporting and warehousing, the products of industrial companies.
6. Specialty on Environment Protection: based on subjects on ecological questions, methods of analytical chemistry, and legal rules of environment protection the students of this specialty will become familiar with the field of water- soil-, air- and noise- pollution and protection.
7. Speciality on Quality Management: after subjects on theory of quality management, the students will be trained to be able to build systems of certification and quality management for products and technologies, with special emphasis on metallurgical technologies.

As one can see, all the above specialties are designed in a way, that all of them can provide complementary knowledge to the students, attending any of the sub-branches of metallurgy, foundry and metal forming. The similar new educational structure has also been introduced to the branch of materials engineering, due to the fact, that engineers producing polymers or ceramics need similar complementary knowledge to those, producing metals.

The economical and political changes taking place in Hungary between 1988 - 1992, coincided with the world-wide crisis of the metallurgical industry forced the leaders of the Faculty of Metallurgical Engineering of the University of Miskolc to work out surviving strategies. As a result, new branches at the Faculty (Engineer-Physicist and Materials Engineer) were accredited, and also complementary, “fashionable” sub-branches to the branch of metallurgical engineering were introduced. The new management of the faculty faced the contradictory effects of the new sub-branches. On the one hand, the new sub-branches indeed increased the interest of young people in choosing metallurgy, but as a result, young engineers were missing the special knowledge of metallurgical technologies on the other hand, and this fact has been criticized by industrial leaders.

As a compromise, a 2-level specialization has been recently introduced both to the branch of metallurgical engineering and materials engineering. Starting in September 1999, the students-metallurgists will be specialized in:

• one of the sub-branches of industrial importance, such as Metallurgy, Foundry or Metal-forming,
• one of the specialties of complementary importance, such as Materials Information, Automation, Energy Management, Waste Management, Marketing, Environment Protection, or Quality Management.

Horváth Z., Nagy M.: The history of the Hungarian education of metallurgical engineering (in Hungarian) - Kohászati Lapok, 1960, 235 - 242 pp.

Gyulai Z.: Beginnings of the Hungarian education on mining and metallurgical engineering (in Hungarian) - Bányászati Lapok, 1964, 145-161 pp.

Zsámboki L.: Beginnings of the education on metallurgical engineering in Hungary (in Hungary) - BKL Kohászat, 1984, 485-489 pp.

Zsámboki L.: From Selmec to Miskolc 1735 - 1985. To the 250^th anniversary of the Hungarian technical higher education (in Hungarian) - Miskolc, 1985, NME, 295 pp.

Kovács F.: Unversity education of mining and metallurgy in Hungary in the 20^th century - in: Mining and Metallurgy of the Carpathian Basin in the 20^th century, Proceedings ed. by L. Zsámboki, Miskolc, 1994, 197 - 212 pp.

Table 2. The new educational structure of the branch of Metallurgical Engineering

VISSZA

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