Change in domestic tertiary-education applications. Regional impact on decision making

Abstract

The paper deals with Hungarian students regarding their decisions to apply for institutions of higher (tertiary) education. It examines the evolution of the application numbers for the last ten years in order to detect regional impacts, tendencies and potential deviations.

We analyse the numbers of applicants and their ratios to admitted students, drawing the identifiable conclusions. On this basis, we suggest a possible and suitable direction for the future, potentially supporting decision-making processes for institutional strategies.

We worked with secondary data sources provided by the Hungarian Educational Authority related to the tertiary education applications and admissions, sorting and grouping them according to predefined criteria to visualise changes in the territorial, institutional and subjective factors in first-place applications, total numbers of applications and admissions.

Our results show a drastic change in areas of attraction to the Hungarian tertiary educational institutions. There was a ‘golden age’ in the early millennium evidenced by a rapid growth of short-cycled student inflow which ended just a few years later. Also, regular applications suffered a fall in 2010–2011, affected by several external and internal factors (Bologna system, extended opportunities for studying and working abroad, governmental funding cuts, etc.). In total, besides the decreasing number of potential students, only Budapest has been able to generate a significant attraction and retaining power. This, in turn, results in an even stronger centralisation of Hungarian tertiary education.

Furthermore, another strong change can be seen: In addition to the Hungarian capital, the traditional scientific centres were also able to attract students from territories with previously smaller tertiary education potential. By the same token, less attractive areas are in need to find new opportunities and strategies not to risk closure of their operations.

In the study, we draw attention to the analysis of the regional aspects of applications. Many have already written about the importance of a marketing information system. We focus on the role of the mandatory Graduate Career Tracking System instead. It is crucial for institutions to demonstrate the possible ways of utilisation and embedding the data collected and analysed since 2010 into institutional processes to complement the data aggregation by the State Administrative Database.