Abstract:

In the Slovak Republic Act No. 204/2011 Coll., which amends and supplements Act No. 184/1999 Coll. on the Use of Languages of National Minorities, regulates the use of minority languages in official communication. According to this act, the Hungarian language, as a minority language can be used in municipalities, where at least 20% of the municipal population is made up of this national minority. In Slovakia currently 512 municipalities meet this criterion.

The Report on the Use National Minority Language in the Territory of the Slovak Republic for the period 2017-2018 from the Office of the Plenipotentiary of the Government of the Slovak Republic for National Minorities shows that at the municipal level 87% of the employees speak the Hungarian language but this number is decreased to 18% at the district offices. The majority of the administrative workers do not have adequate Hungarian language and stylistic knowledge and competence necessary for the appropriate standard of administration in Hungarian: this applies even to bilingual employees who have graduated from a Hungarian school.

In 2011 the Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra (hereinafter referred to as “UKF”) opened a Slovakia-wide completely new study program named Hungarian-Slovak Bilingual Mediator (hereinafter referred to as “MSBM”). This program provides training for professionals in the field of administration at governments as well as companies. It aims to develop competencies in the official communication process in Hungarian, Slovak and English language, basic legal, economic and computer science. From the study program MSBM 186 students have graduated since the beginning of the course – who were already able to acquire many years of work experience. At the UKF the active students are monitored yearly: they can share their opinions and recommendations about the lectures, teachers and classrooms. Due to this, the university is able to improve the standard of education seeing as monitoring is an element of development towards the enhancement of quality of teaching and learning.

This paper contains results of the sub-research which is part of a bigger project, where the researcher aims to answer the question how to better match the education at the university with the expectations of the public administration job market.

The aims of the research:
i) examination of how the graduate students (30) think about their studies, how the competencies acquired at the university are utilized in their current workexamination of the results from the monitoring at the study program MSBM
ii) to compare the opinions of the graduate students and the active students

The method of the research:
i) filling questionnaire with 30 graduate students
ii) individual interview with graduate students working at public administration
iii) analyzing the results of active students monitoring

The result of the questionnaire shows what kind of competencies and skills should be developed by the university to educate the most qualified graduate students for the job market. The active and graduate students agreed that the education should be more practice oriented and the study program should focus on teaching foreign languages more effectively.

Keywords:

Graduate student, administrative worker, minority language in official use, Hungarian in Slovakia.