Hungary’s most popular university degrees among foreigners

While there are a great number of people flooding to work in Hungary, what do the numbers say about education? Let’s see how many people come to Hungary for the sake of learning.

Hungary has indeed had some problems with its education system recently, but regardless, university level education does have its beneficiary qualities. How convincing are these benefits for foreigners?

Popular fields

These facts are according to a conclusive survey done by Eurostudent in more than thirty countries, which was conducted back in 2022. This research, also noted by Economx, states that the number of foreigners in the Hungarian higher education system barely exceeds 10 percent.

The fields most populated by foreigners are natural sciences, agriculture, engineering, social sciences, medical and health sciences. The popularity of these degrees can be due to their high quality and well-known successes in addition to their internationality. Meaning that, with a degree in medical sciences, one can work just about anywhere. There are no exclusively specific systems in place that would obstruct that field from its internationalism.

These degrees naturally bear a great number of students from abroad, while some fields seem to lack foreign students.

Less popular fields

Those lacking are mainly teacher training, legal and political science programs and sports education. Some of these, like law degrees, can be explained by the fact that they are very unique to Hungary and once someone commits to it, it’s quite hard to move away. The other part of the list may be in relation to the quality of these same degrees in neighbouring countries.

Surprisingly, in these fields, the low numbers aren’t only for foreign students. There are also fewer people with dual Hungarian citizenship partaking in these degrees.

Tendencies of time

According to the survey, most students who came from abroad are enrolled in master’s programs. When looking only at master’s programs, 19 percent of the whole student body is counted as a non-Hungarian. In undivided programmes, this number is 9 percent. It’s lowest in the undergraduate programs, with a shy 7 percent of students hailing from abroad. Seems like students are generally more keen on leaving their old life for their studies in their later years.

Surprising statistics

These statistics translate into Hungarian universities’ population being 90 percent Hungarians, including those with dual citizenship. Out of this staggeringly high number, 87 percent were born in Hungary. What is surprising though is that out of the 13 percent of students who were born outside the borders, 8 percent come from beyond Europe. Out of those who study in Hungary now, only 3 percent were born in neighbouring countries and a shy 1 percent marks those who come from more distant European lands.

To summarise, the total proportion of those whose native language is not Hungarian is around 10 percent.

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