Abstract:

Internationalization has become a trend in higher education recently to improve the reputation of the institution as well as to provide cross-cultural learning environment for students as requested by the global environment. Therefore, the past few years have seen increasing efforts at Hungarian higher education institutions as well to internationalize their activities. As a result of this, the number of students received and sent abroad has been increasing continuously. The present paper investigates the consequences of internationalization, especially those related to the cultural sensitivity of the foreign students at Széchenyi István University as well as that of the University’s Hungarian students who have joint classes with foreign students. Internationalization is expected to enhance the intercultural competence as well as the cultural sensitivity of both the foreign and the domestic students. As a consequence of this, the paper introduces the rationale, the purposes and content of a questionnaire survey designed to find out about the cultural sensitivity of the aforementioned foreign and Hungarian students.

Keywords:

Cultural sensitivity, internationalization, higher education.