The number of students hit an all-time low in Hungary

In the past couple of years the government has been saving money on the students’ expense. It was before the year 2000 since the number of students in higher education was as low as in 2015, writes vg.hu.

The number of students in higher education decreased with 10.000 within a year, and only 295.000 people are studying in different colleges and universities. Their number was below 300.000 only in the academic year of 1998/1999.

This tendency is in harmony with the government’s policy: the cabinet would increase the number of skilled workers who have a high school diploma on the expense of higher education students. Peter Radó, education researcher, said that in the past couple of years the number of students in higher education has decreased twice as much as it could have been demographically justified.

According to KSH’s (Hungarian Central Statistical Office) statistics in the academic year of 2015/2016 the number of students was 210.000, which is 7.000 less than in the previous year. 93% of them (195.000) are currently doing their BA or MA studies, or chose an MA with teaching qualification. The number of correspondence students have decreased by 4.000 compared to the previous year. Radó is expecting this number to keep decreasing, because the government intends to shrink the number of students.

Besides higher education, there are problems in secondary education as well. The number of students in secondary education has fallen by 5% within a year, to 446.000. There are also demographic reasons for that change: school age has been lowered from 18 to 16. Experts already predicted this tendency in 2011 and said that the number of students in secondary education will keep decreasing after the lowering of the school age, which also lowers their chance to get a job.

Parallel to this phenomena, the amount of money spent on education has fallen significantly (it was 4.75% of the GDP in 2010, but it was only 3.93% in 2013, and its stagnating). Hungary is spending less on education not only compared to the other countries of the European Union, but within the region as well.

The number of students who had a successful high school graduation was 72.000 in 2015, which is 5.000 less than in the previous year. The number of people who had a successful vocational exam was 48.000, which is more than a 13% decrease compared to 2014.

based on an article of vg.hu

Copy editor: bm

Source: vg.hu