Applications for the Pannónia Programme for international exchanges open in January

Balázs Hankó, State Secretary for Higher Education at the Ministry of Culture and Innovation, announced at a press conference on Wednesday: In 2024, 10 billion forints will be available for students, lecturers, and researchers of model-changed universities to gain experiences at the world’s leading universities, which they can later utilise for the development of the Hungarian economy and society.  The call for applications for the program has been published on the website of the Tempus Közalapítvány (Tempus Public Foundation), which collaborates with the ministry as a strategic partner – he added.  

He stated that one of the conditions for successful Hungarian higher education is participation in international exchange programmes: currently, 10,000 students, lecturers, and researchers participate in such programs, including Erasmus+. However, they expect the Pannónia Programme to increase this number to 20,000 annually by 2030. He said that they expect that next year the programme will enable 8,000 students, lecturers and researchers to gain international experience in higher education institutions around the world. The credits obtained in this way will always be accepted by domestic institutions, and the Pannónia Programme will also support the acquisition of experience with a monthly scholarship of 350,000 to 500,000 HUF. 20 percent of the funding, 2 billion HUF, is intended for Hungarian students, lecturers, and researchers to attend one of the top 250 universities in the world, said Balázs Hankó. 

At the press conference, Károly Czibere, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Tempus Közalapítvány (Tempus Public Foundation), informed that higher education institutions can apply for the tender from 15 January, and the deadline for submitting applications is 29 January. The Board of Trustees is expected to make a decision on the applications by the end of February, and contracts will be concluded by the end of April. He said that they are currently in contact with universities in 99 countries and are doing their best to provide higher education institutions with information about opportunities. To achieve this, they are in constant contact with the international contacts of the institutions and plan to conduct a series of briefings at the institutions, said Károly Czibere, who expressed that “the success of the program is predetermined.” 

At the press conference it was said that in recent years, the government has successfully renewed higher education, leading to a turnaround in competitiveness. As a result, 12 Hungarian universities now rank in the top 5 percent of the world’s top higher education institutions. The government’s goal is to have at least one Hungarian university among the world’s top 100 universities and at least three among Europe’s top 100 higher education institutions by 2030. 

(MTI)