73,805 students admitted to universities this year

Most freshers — some 17,000 people — applied for courses in business administration, followed by technical studies, medicine, pedagogy and law, Balazs Hanko said. Budapest’s Eotvos Lorand University attracted more students (11,000) than any other institution, he added.

Thanks to the higher-education reforms launched by the government, the number of students starting their studies in vocational fields has grown by 16 percent, to 8,300, since 2020. Fully 6,200, or 14 percent more freshers, are starting medical studies this year than in 2020, he said. The number of students starting courses in agriculture has grown to 3,100, he said.

Tertiary education has a 30 percent drop-out rate in Hungary, one that the government plans to reduce to 20 percent in the coming years by launching mentoring programmes, he said.

Hungarian graduates need only 1.2 months on average to find work in the European Union, and earn 1.5-2 times more than their peers with only secondary education, he said.

Of 25,000 universities worldwide, 11 Hungarian institutions are among the best 1,400 in the world, Hankó said. The government aims for one to be included among the top 100 by 2030, and three among the best 100 European universities, he added.