‘New era’ announced in post-graduate education in Hungary
Balázs Hankó, the culture and innovation minister, told a press conference on Saturday that post-graduate education in Hungary was on the cusp of a “new era”, adding that more funding would flow towards “the young people creating and shaping the future”.
The government has a vested interest in the success of Hungarian researchers and scientists, and will “create a win-win situation for post-graduate students, researchers and universities, he said. In the new system, post-graduate education will be divided into three levels: researcher excellence, cooperative and traditional post-graduate education, he said.
The government will plough 40 billion forints (EUR 99.3m) into the researcher excellence programme, with 300-350 post-graduate positions, he said. “The best of our students will be able to participate in research here, with a gross minimum income of 600,000 forints,” he said.
The cooperative model will be open for post-graduate students working while completing their studies. These students will receive a net 250,000 forint grant, so that their income will come to a net 400,000 forints minimum, he said. Those finishing their studies earlier than the standard 4 years will be entitled to the grants they would have received during the original time span, he added. This plan, he said, “could impact all 11,000 current post-graduate students.”
Hankó said the plans were designed to “motivate our youth to even closer cooperation, research and learning.” He pledged that the government would strengthen engineering and nature sciences, IT and agriculture education, as well as universities’ autonomy. Universities will have a free hand in organising post-graduate education and deciding whether they will be incorporated into their credit system, he said.
Twelve Hungarian universities are currently among the top 5 percent in the world, he said. The number of post-graduate students was increased by 50 percent in the past decade, and that of researchers doubled; Hungary has 6,500 researcher-developers per million inhabitants, he added.
“Unlike Brussels,” the government is planning to elevate Hungary among the 10 most innovative nations of Europe by 2030 and to increase the number of researchers to 9,000 per million inhabitants, he said. Post-graduate training will be boosted even as “Brussels unlawfully excludes [Hungarian] researchers from its Erasmus and Horizon programmes”, he said.
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