The National Council of Scientific Students has been in contact with the gradually rebuilding Hungarian higher education beyond the border for 25 years. A milestone in this relationship building is the establishment of the Scientific Student Circles without Borders (HTDK) programme in 2013.
The programme’s mission is to support the talent development of native Hungarian-speaking students in higher education across the border, using the culture and tools of the seven-decade-old tradition of the Hungarian scientific student circle movement.
The HTDK programme encourages the creation of new talent workshops and the methodological development of existing workshops in all relevant fields. The aim is to enable these workshops, their students and teachers to fully participate in the Hungarian scientific student circle (STC) movement. To this end, it facilitates direct exchanges of teachers and students between institutions and the organisation of joint professional programmes. It pays particular attention to the most disadvantaged countries and to fields of study that are disadvantaged in terms of Hungarian-language teaching and professional culture. As a result of the work of the HTDK programme, by 2016, delegates from all relevant cross-border higher education institutions were included in the professional committees governing the 16 OTDT fields of expertise, and cooperation agreements between cross-border talent workshops and OTDT were renewed.
The HTDK programme organises both formal and informal professional forums at country and pan-Carpathian level. It encourages the creation of independent councils of transnational scientific student circles (or equivalent, with an equivalent function) and provides professional and technical support for their work. The HTDK programme also actively supports the work of transnational (and OTDK-delegating) TDK conferences by providing professional referees, jury members and consultants.
The HTDK programme supports the participation of students and teachers from abroad in the biennial National Conference of Scientific Students (NCSD).In 2013 (XXXI NCSD) 335 participants, in 2015 (XXXII NCSD) 351 participants, in 2017 401 participants and in 2019 620 participants from abroad participated in the conference as student speakers, jury members or observers. This element of the programme is traditionally supported financially by the National Talent Programme.
