A “poster child” of domestic territorial and settlement development: the deterioration of higher education in less developed regions

Abstract

Nowadays, the development of a region mainly depends on the level of human capital, which prioritizes the quality and spatiality of education, especially that of higher education. After the regime change of 1990, higher education in Hungary was also restructured, new institutions were established and the number of students also increased sharply, especially in rural training places. Student numbers between 1980 and 1990 were around 100 thousand throughout, followed by a rapid growth: in 1995 180 thousand, in 2000 327 thousand, while in 2005 424 thousand students were recorded. However, from this point student numbers have gradually decreased and have stabilised since 2016 at about 280-290 thousand, indicating a two and a half per cent decrease over three decades. The slowdown of the dynamic increase after 2006 was due to demographical trends, the introduction of multilevel higher education system, and the prevalence of fee-paying trainings. The significant decrease in the number of students intensified the competition between institutions, primarily between smaller rural-based institutions while training places of less developed regions wererelegated to the background.

In international comparison, Hungary is at the bottom of thelist among EU member states in terms of the per-unit number of students, graduated employees and people studying while working, as well as budgetary expenditure. Furthermore, the proportion of used private resources is rather high, students’ dropout is significant, and the number of teachers is also scarce. Most secondary school graduates manage to get admission to higher education, including those who are less prepared (e.g., they have insufficient knowledge of foreign languages), therefore, they need mentoring and catching up. Institutions, however, have neither the financial resources nor the teachers for this, which may also explain why many give up their studies.

In this study, we investigate how student numbers evolved by settlement and urban area. We also analyse the territorial development of the number of full-time and part-time trainings, in addition to the number of recently admitted students. The data indicate that the spatial concentration of students is increasingly significant, the dominance of thecapital and traditional university centres has strengthened not only in master programmes, but also on the lower levels of trainings. Full-time higher education has dropped or ceased in seven counties by now, making the quality labour supply of local companies and institutions very difficult. The transformation of higher education has an adverse effect not only on one of the major goals of regional development, namely the catch-up of less developed regions, but also on the competitiveness of the country.