Felsőoktatás-politikai tévelygések
Higher Education-Policy Missteps

Summary/Abstract: The study reviews the higher education policy steps of the current government term. It looks at four areas. The first is the overhaul of the admissions system, which has seen higher education move towards a freeze on social mobility as a result of the government’s elitist policies. The other area is institutional management, where the government intends to make progress with the reorganisation of foundations, under the slogan of economy and efficiency, after the failure of the former chancellorship system, which was proclaimed a panacea. However, this reorganisation is in fact more of a political occupation, with the majority of public higher education institutions being taken over by Fidesz-friendly boards of trustees. The third area is internationalisation. In this area, there is a striking contradiction between the government’s illegal blocking of CEU’s operation in Hungary and the senseless invitation of Fudan University. But there is also a contradiction between the luring of foreign students to Hungary with substantial government support versus the low level of government encouragement for domestic students to study abroad. And finally, the restructuring of higher education funding is just as controversial. In the higher education sector, which has been subject to severe cutbacks since 2013, funding has been doubled for institutions that have been reorganised by the government to be owned and run by pro-government boards of trustees.

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