Planned for 2008/2009
The Humanitad Foundation is currently developing a series of far-reaching global education programmes. These programmes are endeavouring to bridge educative methods and means across the vast chasm, which in the third millennium, still exists between a modern, privileged and progressive First world and an ill-equipped,marginalised and unstable Third world. The importance of determining a generic alphabet which will begin to bridge those key social, political and theological divides which effectively break the human family into two disparate parts cannot be over estimated. The Humanitad Education Agenda is addressing this urgent need for a concentration of serious resources and expertise to the fulsome education of our less developed and less fortunate human citizens.
Contents
An Unrivalled International Resource Centre
Central to the Humanitad Education Agenda is the formation of the Global Media University. This institution will be the first of its kind, and will very soon become a central international resource for recruitment, research and development in world media sciences. It will effectively become a central hub of multi-national academic excellence, containing select students from each world nation.
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Addressing The Brain-Drain
A pivotal criteria in the gifting of scholarships to students from the Third World will be an agreement that they must, on graduation from the GMU, return to their respective nations for a minimum period - in order to revitalise their local e-commerce and media cultures. This clause intends to stem the current tide of diminishing local talents, which the ‘brain-drain’ syndrome has identified as a double negative dilemma facing many Third world nations.
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The Szentes Opportunity
Establishing the centralised headquarters for the Humanitad Global Education Agenda in Szentes (Hungary) has some immediate and obvious benefits. Within two years, Hungary is expected to join the European Union, and although it is a nation still in financial recovery, it is a nation of academic excellence and renown. Humanitad are able to acquire an entire existing infrastructure for the establishing of its permanent global education agenda: the town of Szentes is perfectly place to become a University city. The local municipal as well as broad governmental machinery (from the highest office of State are committed to both the facilitation and cooperation with Humanitad in making available whatever land, infrastructure and resources are required in the realisation of this far-reaching and vital positioning of a permanent academic institution
of international excellence.
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Rationale For The Founding of The G.M.U
By Dr. Dezso Benedek (Director of Humanitad Education Programmes)
At the beginning of the third millennium, there is no institution of education which remains unaffected by the rapid development of media technology. In the more developed countries of Europe, Asia and of the Americas, higher education institutions are already being rated according to their advanced media technology assets and co-related know-how, an according to accessibility to them. The word ‘media’ has come to stand for a vast modern concept which encompasse several disciplines from mass-communication to space-age technology. It is rapidly developing into a scientific discipline of its own and its ramifications leave almost nothing untouched. In a very short space of time, digital technology has already become a more unifying force in the world than anything before, and it is plain that access to world commerce will depend on it more than we ever expected. In less developed countries, where often resources are not sufficient for the introduction of up-to date media technologies, the fall-back is now felt more then ever before. The feeling of being left behind or abandoned by the global community has never been so perceptible and so alarming. It is this aspect, the uneven development and limited access to global resources of struggling nations, which the creation of a Global Media University (GMU) will address. The idea is simple: let us help developing nations by-pass their outdate technologies and their old and inefficient education systems and develop from ground zero to state-of-the-art media competence. This can be achieved by subsidising the study of students, who after earning a media engineering degree at GMU will return to their countries as invaluable assets for the development of local up-to-date media studies necessary for maintaining access to modern market economy. The Global Media University will fuse our knowledge of journalism, radio, television, computer science and of the electronic industry, into one never-before-attempted pragmatic education. A five-year GMU degree of media engineering will be the most comprehensive and diverse theoretical and practical media qualification achieved so far in an institution of higher education. Bound by long-lasting academic traditions and rigidl limited discipline divisions, no traditional university could achieve such curricular freedom and efficiency in theoretical and pragmatic training as GMU. GMU will not only make a difference in global academia, but is expected to revitalise an entire region of Hungary. The university is planned to be realised in Szentes, a small town of 32,000, in Csongrad county in south-eastern Hungary. The building of a campus to accommodate 20-30 thousand students will have an unprecedented impact on the development of the region. The township of Szentes has agreed to donate a formidable building complex (the former county hall of Csongrad) for
the establishment of the GMU. The Humanitad Foundation will look to facilitate the renovation of the building complex. In return the Szentes City Council will lease the building to GMU for $1per annum in perpetuity for as long as the university remains operational. The town is 30 minute away from a national divided-highway, 1:30 minutes away from Budapest. It has a train station, long-distance bus station and a small airport. It has a large telecom tower, one of a chain which links Hungary to Romania, Yugoslavia and Slovania. The project has the approval of the Hungarian Government at the highest level but will not be funded from domestic resources, instead, it will rely entirely on external funding. One of the basic operational concepts of GMU is that it will offer subsidised education while it will generate revenue by: O competing for external funding through the submission of proposals to domestic and international funding agencies.
- sales of contracted computer programs
- sales of contracted visual media products
- conversion of US media products to EU standards
- journalism and media products
- the restoration of archives as media products
- contracting technical support for international conferences
- profit from on-campus commercial units
- renting of GMU operated studios
- the trading of centralised and stored information as commercial media assets.
- tuition from self supporting students
A comprehensive breakdown of the broad funding requirement and timescales for the institution of the GMU is currently being undertaken and will be available on request. The costs will include the renovation of the main Administrative Building, the tuition of one thousand students for five years in line for the first GMU degrees, all administrative and staffing salaries as well as the complete construction costs of the fully fledged GMU campus complex.
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Global Media University Complex
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