Tracing the Multidisciplinary Turn in Higher Education: COVID and Artificial Intelligence as Catalysts in Scholarly Discourse (2015–2025) magyar

Abstract

The COVID–19 pandemic has triggered fundamental changes in the operation of higher education institutions, particularly in the content, organizational, and methodological dimensions of multidisciplinary programs. The aim of the study is to explore the direction and depth of shifts identified by researchers in the international scholarly discourse on multidisciplinary university education, based on a comparison of the periods of 2015–2020 and 2020 to June 2025. The research employed a two-phase thematic content analysis: first, an inductive analysis of 100 peer-reviewed articles from the pre-pandemic period; second, a targeted deductive analysis of 33 selected articles from the post-pandemic phase. The results show that disciplinary dominance, institutional rigidity, career identity uncertainty, and student motivation combined with digital technology use form a closely intertwined set of barriers that have become systemic challenges for multidisciplinary curriculum development. A key contribution of this study is the demonstration that this problem field has become more homogeneous, providing a clearer starting point for targeted institutional and pedagogical interventions. The findings contribute to the methodological foundations of research on multidisciplinary education and offer guidance for future institutional and educational development.