Protest staged against restructuring of Corvinus university

Budapest, September 7 (MTI) – Some 700-800 people held a protest march against the government’s planned restructure of Budapest Corvinus University in Budapest on Monday.

Last week the state secretary for higher education announced plans to move three of the university’s departments – the departments of food science, horticultural science and landscape architecture – to the Szent Istvan University of Godollo. The relocation is set to take effect on January 1 next year.

The march began at noon from the university’s Buda campus on Villanyi Road where the three departments are located. A banner at the front of the march read: “We won’t give up the Buda campus”. Protesters marched from Villanyi Road through the BAH node to the Budapest Convention Centre where the university’s academic year opening event was held.

A student said at the scene that the relocation of the three departments puts the university in danger. “They want to take away our future, our degree,” the student said, adding that students did not choose to go to Corvinus to get a degree from Szent Istvan University.

Marietta Fodor, a professor at the university’s department of food science, said the government had ignored the decision of the university’s senate which had voted to keep the departments together.

Photo: MTI

Source: http://mtva.hu/hu/hungary-matters