Hungarian drama students under pressure over dual enrolments

Concerns about Hungary’s 2019 university governance changes have seen the country frozen out of European Union funding, but a group of drama students who took dual diplomas because of the changes are now facing scrutiny at home.

Around half the staff and students at the University of Theatre and Film Arts (SZFE) in Budapest left the institution when it came under a foundation governance model widely criticised for putting institutional control in the hands of loyalists to Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party.

Their departure came after the ministry refused to approve the election of Laszlo Upor as SZFE rector, with the renegades forming the Freeszfe Society, which describes itself as “an autonomous creative space worthy of the traditions of the former university”.

“Our university was the only one that stood up to the government’s intrusion into academia,” Professor Upor told Times Higher Education. To enable the 170 departed students to graduate, the society arranged for them to enrol at seven partner universities and carry over their SZFE credit.

“Those universities basically adopted our students in classes and hired us to teach their students, who were actually our own students, and they would accredit this work and actually issue the degrees,” said Professor Upor.

Most have since received their diplomas, but some have faced tough questioning on their return. Hungary’s Education Authority has sent letters to several students asking for proofs of completion for each course module, Professor Upor said. “Basically, it claims that those five universities are lying, there was no real education and they had no right to issue those diplomas,” he said.

Hungary was an early ratifier of the Lisbon Recognition Convention, an international agreement drawn up by the Council of Europe and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) to ensure foreign study is honoured unless programmes are “substantially different” from domestic equivalents.

Liviu Matei, head of the School of Education, Communication & Society at King’s College London, said the Hungarian authorities’ severe questioning of the students “perpetuates a climate of political abuse in higher education and disregard for the rule of law”.

Professor Upor said some students had been given a short timeline to meet the public funding requirement of working three years in Hungary after graduation, rather than the usual 20-year window. “What is very clear is they want to take some kind of revenge on us, on this free society, on the students who stood up,” he said.

THE contacted the Education Authority and responsible ministry to respond to the claims, but did not receive a response.

ben.upton@timeshighereducation.com