During the previously mentioned international cooperation the need for Sandwich type education with industrial periods of Hungarian students in a foreign country was formulated by the consortium. This need met the need of German enterprises for informaticians. There is a huge shortage of educated informaticians in Germany (formulated by the chancellor of Germany G. Schröder as well) and as one possible solution the German association of small and medium size enterprises proposed the present cooperation between Hungarian higher educational institutions with informatician training and German companies. The 3 Hungarian institutions would send students of informatics to a German company for practical training as part of their Sandwich type training or for project work towards their diploma thesis. This cooperation would be beneficial to all participants: (i) students would get very valuable international experience, specific professional skills and they would have a better idea of a real life working situation; (ii) the higher educational institutions would be able to provide the preferred vocational element in their training, the Sandwich type programs would have the suggested international element; (iii) the companies would get academically well trained workers for the duration of the practical training. As an additional positive result the German association suggested that in case of a successful cooperation between a company and a student, the company would help the interested students to start their own small enterprise in Hungary upon graduation. The company would provide work for this small enterprise in Hungary, which would be obviously beneficial for both parties.

The activities proposed in the present application would establish this type of international cooperation for longer term, to make the necessary curriculum developments, to investigate the legal, financial and administrative conditions and to disseminate the results of this pilot phase, i.e. to create a structure for the management of this type of foreign placements.

Our pilot project application needs the experiences of the first 30 students. We present a Leonardo mobility project (Foreign training of informaticians – prospective small entrepreneurs) at the same time. The aim of the mobility project is to cover only the expenses of the training (travel, subsistence, language, entrepreneur training etc.) of this 1st group of students. Therefore the 2 applications are very strongly related. Nevertheless this pilot application could be valuable on its own as well.

The project is planned for 24 months and will be carried out by the above mentioned consortium. There will be a Project Committee (containing a representative of each consortium member). This committee decides about the main activities, and regularly carries out the monitoring, evaluation tasks. The project coordinator is responsible for the realization of the decisions and the fulfillment of the Leonardo rules. The activities of the project will be divided in Work Packages (I. Curriculum development, II. Development of "How to establish your own business course", III. Marketing of the educational program, IV. Selection process, evalution during the training, V. Monitoring, evaluation, quality assurance, dissemination of the project, VI. Project management, VII. Piloting.). Each work package will have a responsible. The Timetable of the main activities: Months 1-6. Proposal for the structure of training, the different variants to experiment. Development of new teaching materials and curricula. Creation of monitoring and evaluation bodies. 7-12: Pilot phase. Selection of enterprises, students (1^st group), language, communication training in Hungary; practical placement, language, business training in Germany. Months 13-18: Academic evaluation of practical placement, foundation of small business in Hungary. Evaluation of the results of Pilot phase. Recommendations for modifications and additional elements. Creation of the finalized form of the international training Months 19-24: Regular training of a 2^nd group of students. Final evaluation. Dissemination.