Several social and educational features account for the connection between higher educational system and the social group of intellectuals. Although this connection was not clear-cut in the past as well but nowadays this relationship seems to be more complicated by reasons such as notions of mass higher educational system, the changes in the functions of the universities, the utilitarian expectations of students, the features of the labour market and the new emphasis of the social stratification.

Special literature delineates possible roles of intellectuals (e.g. professionals, public intellectuals or intelligentsia). The location of our study is Hungary so this latter type of role can be important as well because this type refers to the societies of Eastern Europe (Szelényi 1990) But the utilitarian expectations and the dominance of labour-market oriented attitude predict a mixed pattern the students’ conceptions about intellectual roles even if some ideas of the roles intelligentsia still function.

Several function were linked to this social group (creating theories, public life, critical attitudes, shaping or leading the social processes etc.) but in the past decades these functions were transformed. Economic, social, disciplinary and theoretic elements are related to this transformation (Reul 2005, Hudson 2005, Bauman 1995, Jacoby 2000, Haney 2008). But the transformation of the universities (Bok 2000, Graham 2005, Marginson 2007, Lagermann & Lewis 2012, Fitzgerald, White & Gunter 2012) can form the attitudes, the behaviour and the practices of the would-be-intellectuals as well.

The effects of the universities are still in close relationship with the socialisation process inside the higher education institution (Weidman 2006). This effect has a significant importance in the case of first generation students because their features and opportunities are particular according to the international and Hungarian analyses.

The mass higher education system started to emerge in the 90’s in Hungary (Kozma, 2004, Hrubos 2014). Earlier the system had got elitist and closed features and the control of the politics was strong whereas the presence of market mechanism was not significant. The socialist system tried to restrict the access of children of the intellectuals during the preliminary process but this restriction was not utterly succesful. The politics restricted the subsistence of the public intellectuals and the function of criticism as well – these activities were pushed into background or in the emerging „second publicity” in the late Kádár-era.

The utilitarian aspects became more important in mass higher educational system after the regime fall. This can shape the expectations of students (Veroszta 2010) and the maintenance of institutions. This change can highlight the elements of the „professional role” and the importance of expertise. The climate of mass higher educational institutions seem to move from high culture on the grounds of several notions (the rise of the non-traditional and first generation intellectuals, the diversification of the higher education etc., (Bocsi 2016)). The roles of the lecturers have changed as well and this new type of role can restrict the effects of the lecturers  toward students. The relationship between the labour market and the HE institutions has become closer which can raise the importance of the practical elements of knowledge (Fuller 2009). According to the research data the Hungarian young people are less interested in politics (Oross 2013) which can imply the changed and waning presence of the elements of public intellectuals’ role.

For all these reasons the transformation of the intellectual roles expected and we think it is worth exploring this research area.

Our empirical data come from a nationwide quantitative research in Hungary (Family and Career – lead by Dr. Engler Ágnes in 2017). The number of respondents is 1502. The type of the sampling was stratified and the aspects of the sampling were the following: regions of the country, the size of the institutions and disciplines. The population consists of full time students in BA, MA and undivided training courses (except freshmen in BA and undivided training programmes). Since there are no similar research projects (either international or Hungarian) we have created a question block with 18 items. These items are based on special literature (the definitions of intellectuals, the possible roles - professionals, public intellectuals etc.) and we tried to cover every segments of the intellectual life and roles. The respondents evaluated the items with a four-grade scale (e.g. expertise, analysis of social notions, intellectual independence, high culture activities, preservation of national culture, effort to good and beauty etc.). The techniques were the following: means, frequencies, ANOVA-test and factor analysis. The independent variables were gender, the type of the settlement, the parental educational level (separately mother and father), subjective economic capital, objective economic capital and scientific fields. Our hypotheses were the following: - the gender shapes the concepts on the intellectual roles. We suppose that the elements of criticism and public intellectuals will be more typical in the case of men. - we can identify the special elements of the first generation intellectuals - special roles will be typical in the various areas of sciences (high culture activities in the field of arts, criticism of social notions in the field of social sciences etc.) Another question block analyzed the effects of the higher educational institutions on intellectuals’ roles. Students evaluated the effects of their institutions with a four-grade scale – with this method we tried to identify the most important segments of the influences. The final step of the analysis was to compare the conceptions about intellectuals’ roles and the real effects of institutions. We suppose that differerences will be identified in the field of moral elements, general knowledge and the components of behaviour.

On the basis of our empirical findings we can model the students’ conceptions about intellectual roles. It is clear-cut that this is a mixed pattern in which the expertise and the classic intellectual elements (high culture activities, effort to good and beauty, education) are dominant. The items of the criticism, the elements of the public intellectual life and the macrolevel effects are less important. With the help of the items five factors were created such as criticism and public life, local and national, classical elitist, macrolevel oriented and knowledge oriented. During the ANOVA-test the features of the subsamples can be identified. We can interlock the criticism and public life with students from higher social strata and the knowledge oriented attitudes with the lower strata. Our first hypothesis was verified. The criticism and public life were linked to men and the knowledge oriented and local and national factors have referred to women. This empirical data show that the higher rate of women in the intellectual’s population can shape the public functions of this social group as well. The parental education level can not shape these patterns except for a few segments. The effects of scientific fields were dominant and some disciplines have a unique and special attitude. The distances between students’ conceptions and institutional effects have been analyzed as well and this hypothesis has been verified too. Students’ demands are different from the institutional effects especially in the field of general knowledge and moral elements. In our opinion these empirical data can be an important feed-back for the institutions, lecturers and policy makers as well. With the help of these relationships we can presume the changes of the intellectuals’ attitude according the transformation of the population and the behaviour of this social groups may be predicted.

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