Corvinus wants to be the best in the region

After the change of ownership, operating costs will be higher, because if we want elite quality, we need performance-based wages – said the Deputy Rector for Education at Corvinus University of Budapest, Lajos Szabó, to Világgazdaság.

The Corvinus University of Budapest (Hungarian abbreviation: ‘BCE’) has been operating as a foundation since July. What do the students and the teachers experience from this?

Preparatory work for education and research and development is under way, and students will soon be able to notice its results. The change in the operating model was necessary because Corvinus reached its operational limits. We have been a market-leading university for a long time in economics, business and quite a few social science courses. Going forward, our goal is to be successful also on the international market. To do this, we need to be able to retain excellent Hungarian students, we need even more foreign students, and in addition to the best Hungarian teachers, we also need an international teaching staff. We also want to persuade Hungarian teachers working abroad to return home, but this cannot be achieved with our previous wage and motivation system and operating environment. To be able to achieve this, we needed a proper financial fund, which is provided by the Maecenas Universitatis Corvini Foundation.

He spoke about raising the proportion of foreign students. What is the goal?

From all, the approximately 12,000 students, the proportion of foreign students is around 14-15 percent, but many of them are guest students who spend only one or two semesters here. The proportion of foreigners who complete their studies at Corvinus is much lower. We want this ratio to be 20-25 percent.

Most foreign students come from Western European countries, but many also come for short programmes from the United States and China. Our own region is an important target group for us, and our main goal is to have more and more local students attend our university.

What plans do we have internationally?

When we started preparing for the foundation’s operation, we also looked into that. Economics, business sciences, and social sciences are areas where we conduct education and research, and we also try to measure ourselves against such rankings. We also found two suitable rankings to measure the success of our operations: one is the Times Higher Education ranking and the other is the Quacquarelli Symonds ranking. In these rankings, BCE ranks between the 800th and 1000th universities, while in their versions taking into account specialisations, it tanks between 300th and 400th. Considering how many universities there are in the world, we are already in the top ten percent. Our main goal now is to be the leading university in Central and Eastern Europe in the field of economics and social sciences. Once we have achieved this, we can come up with ambitious goals to rank among the top 100 higher education institutions in our field in Europe, and among the top 200 in the world. 

Original article