Hungary popular among third-country students

The government chose the protecting Hungary from immigrants to be their central message in the 2018 electoral campaign. However, as we reported before, more and more third-country students come to learn in Hungary. According to abcug.hu, Hungarian universities need their tuition fee money. Meanwhile, the government would like to open markets and develop social capital with their help. Especially the number of Chinese students has risen since 2010. However, more and more students come from Muslim, Far East or African countries, as well. Some universities already spend EUR millions to recruit new students from abroad. As a result, they can compensate themselves for the falling number of Hungarian applicants.

Number of students coming from EU-countries remained constant

In fact, the number of international students equals 10% (32 thousand) of the total number of higher education students in Hungary. According to data, 20 thousand of them came from non-EU countries in academic year 2016/2017. This means that the amount of non-EU students doubled since the academic year 2010/2011. However, according to a survey conducted by Wheel of Fortune Public Utility Foundation,

only the number of students coming from a third country has risen in the last few years. Additionally, it increases by 20% each year.

Meanwhile, the rate of students coming from EU remained constant.

Most of them come from China, Serbia and Iran, 2,000 people from each.
However, the number of Norwegian, Ukrainian, Turkish and Nigerian students are also above 1,000. To tell the truth, Ukrainian and Serbian students are mostly Hungarians living in Transcarpathia and Vojvodina. They come to study in Hungary because Kiev and Beograd do not support institutions of higher education teaching in Hungarian. In addition, they try to

hinder Hungarian students to continue their studies in their mother tongue lately.

Universities need to fill places with third country students

According to the survey, there might be several explanations for the rising number of foreign students in Hungary. Firstly, young age groups in Hungary are becoming thinner by each year because of the population decline. Though seven years ago 302 thousand Hungarians studied in an institution of higher education students, their number decreased to 251 thousand this September.

Main reasons are demography and government policy. According to Central Statistical Office (CSO), there were 129 thousand 18 years old in 2010 while only 98 thousand in 2017. On the other hand, government decreased the number of state-financed programs. Therefore, less can continue their studies after graduation in a state-financed program.

As a result,

disappearing Hungarian students force universities to recruit from abroad

since most foreigners have to pay for their studies. Leaders in this regard are the three prominent universities of Pécs, Debrecen and Szeged. However, for example, the University of Dunaújváros could only fill third of their available places in 2017 from Hungary. Therefore, they allocated 486M HUF (EUR 1.6M) to promote their programs in China next year.