We are having a special visit of a colleague from Hungary, with an opportunity to discuss university policies. In Hungary, universities have adopted a foundation model in the period of Fidesz's rule.
Abstract
Higher education as a sector reproducing knowledge, status and symbolic legitimation plays crucial roles in any society. Post-2010 Hungary, a prominent example of neo-nationalist authoritarian populism in power, is no exception. Interestingly, Hungarian higher education policies have taken numerous turns in the past 15 years. Whereas governance of higher education institutions became increasingly centralized and they found their self-governance curtailed in the early 2010s, the so-called model change of the post-2019 period nominally expanded institutional autonomies and enhanced the flexibility of university management.
The government ministry responsible for higher education was replaced by so-called public interest trusts (PITs) as entities running and overseeing universities. Governing bodies of PITs, the boards of trustees, in turn, consisted of government-friendly political actors, business leaders and, in some cases, academics and high-ranking university administrators. Importantly, these boards of trustees do not report to anyone and have an unlimited mandate in time. Hence, effectively, they act as private owners of formerly public universities with institutionally unlimited powers. Such a governing system has arguably created a possibility for eliminating the remaining elements of academic autonomy in a comparatively under-regulated higher education model, in which universities have become exposed to nominally independent decision-making bodies to which the government outsourced power over them. This way, political control over higher education became disguised and dispersed among politically loyal, government-friendly elite groups who are non-accountable to the public.
The paper is authored by Zoltán Ádám with co-authors Gergely Kováts and Miklós Rosta.
Zoltán Ádám is a Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Social Sciences, Institute for Political Science and Visiting Professor, ELTE University Faculty of Social Sciences.
Co-Authors Gergely Kováts and Miklós Rosta are from Corvinus University of Budapest.
This visited is funded by the CO3 project, which is funded by the European Commission through Horizon Europe.
- Zoltán Ádám is also speaking in the annual event of the the Council of Finnish Academies, discussing under the title Endangered Academic Autonomy: The case of Corvinus University of Budapest, with his story in the Hungarian academy.