There is a somewhat hackneyed saying that you know yourself in trouble. This is also the case with higher education. - states Secretary Balázs Orbán, political director of the prime minister, begins in his Facebook post.
Since the turn of the millennium, our country has been hit by two crises, the economic crisis of 2008 and the recession due to the coronavirus epidemic. The areas of culture and education most often suffer the damage of such crisis times. In 2008, the then left-liberal Gyurcsány government withdrew billions from higher education under the pretext of crisis management.
The Government of Hungary has chosen a different way to deal with the current crisis. While the left took away the resources of the universities during the crisis, we will multiply them.
The changes started with the university model change. As part of this , 21 universities have decided to continue their operations as foundations. During the summer, these universities acquired significant assets, in the order of HUF 2,000 billion.
The left wing, which previously "contested" the austerity, criticized the plans by saying that they only serve the interests of the governing parties, and - and this is more important now - the change in the university model does not mean additional resources, and the conditions for long-term management are not guaranteed.
We have submitted a bill to the National Assembly that will end this debate once and for all. Pursuant to the draft law, the annual operating resources of universities operating as foundations fulfilling a public mission will more than double, to around HUF 330 billion.
In addition, in the following years, we will spend 2,700 billion on the infrastructural development of higher education. Thus, next year, the resources intended to finance universities will increase by two and a half times. With this, the sums spent on higher education in proportion to GDP will approach 2 percent, which will put Hungary in the forefront at the European level as well.
Perhaps no one has ever taken such measures, such a large investment of resources in education, during a crisis. But we believe that the experiment will be successful, and that the competitiveness of Hungarian higher education and the value of the Hungarian diploma will increase to an unprecedented extent.
