The transition towards creating prosperity

The central issue of this article is that of the impediments to creating prosperity within the context of Higher Education during the transition period in Hungary from a budget-commanded regime to market-oriented operations. Fairbanks (2000: 290) refers to prosperity not only as the means through which people can live a good life but also as ‘the enabling environment that improves productivity' and considers the purchasing power of a country per person'. It is seen as important as it affects living standards (e.g. malnutrition and poverty) and productivity levels. Thus dealing with the issue of prosperity also means dealing with poverty.

Fairbanks (2000) declared that each nation has a set of beliefs or mental model for creating prosperity which can change and suggests a 10 stage process, which is as follows: Decode the current strategy for Prosperity; Create a sense of urgency; Understand the range of strategic choices and inform them with analyses; Create a compelling vision; Create new networks of relationships; Communicate the vision; Build productive coalitions; Develop and Communicate short-term wins; Institutionalize the changes; and Evaluate and affirm the changes.