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HUNGARIA |
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HUNGARIA |
INSTITUTIONAL SETTING
As a result of the historical development outlined in Section 1, however unexpected, at present there is no university-level, pure public administration education in Hungary. Education in PA is provided only by the College of Public Administration. Public policy, policy analysis and public management are taught at the Budapest University of Economics Sciences, and at some additional training institutions.
Law graduates are considered the most competent general professionals in public administration. As a consequence, the overwhelming majority of the institutions listed below are law faculties. However, it should be noted that law curricula generally contain PA only as far as administrative law is concerned. Academic institutions where PA programmes are taught, can be grouped into three categories: (a) universities of law; (b) faculties of universities other than those of law; and (c) the College of Public Administration.
The following institutions have been identified as offering high-level PA education:
Universities (Faculties) of Law
- Eötvös Lóránd University, Budapest, Faculty of Law
- Janus Pannonius University, Pécs, Faculty of Law
- József Attila University, Szeged, Faculty of Law
- University of Miskolc, Miskolc, Faculty of Law
- Pázmány Péter University, Piliscsaba, Faculty of Law
- Károli Gáspár University, Kecskemét, Faculty of Law
- Kossuth Lajos University, Debrecen, Institute of Law
Non-Law Institutions (University Faculties)
- Budapest University of Economic Sciences (BUES), Centre for Public Affairs Studies
- Budapest University of Economic Sciences, International Studies Centre
- Századvég School of Politics (in association with the Budapest University of Economic Sciences)
- Central European University (CEU), Department of Political Science
The College of Public Administration
The College of Public Administration forms a unique category separate from the institutions listed above. The professional content and disciplinary background of its programme will be briefly analysed in the next section.
1. Main Streams of Public Administration Education
As previously outlined, the core institutions of graduate-level PA education have been and remain faculties of law. This is true both in the reality of Hungarian public administration as well as in the perception of public administration managers.
Faculties of law provide a uniform education in the field of law; i.e., the core content of legal programmes are identical irrespective of whether the student is preparing to become a lawyer, a juror, or a public administration professional. Legal programmes are uniform to a large extent in another dimension, too: the curricula, including core courses, syllabi, their relative weight, number of semesters and number of course hours, are subject to detailed and nationally uniform (self)regulation. These regulations were adopted on the basis of consensus between Hungarian law faculties in 1993. Variations can be found only with respect to electives, but these form less than fifteen percent of the total programme.
Core courses of legal programmes only include the approaches of other disciplines (e.g., political science and economics) on an introductory level, with the basic purpose of broadening the students’ perspective. Modern management and quantitative methods of social sciences are not discussed. Graduates of a master’s programme become fully-fledged professionals only after passing the bar exam. Again, this is a uniform exercise, consisting of fields of general law, regardless of the student’s specialisation or future professional goals.
Faculties other than those of law, particularly with a policy and management orientation, form a second category of educational institutions in the field of PA. To a certain extent, it is a matter of subjective decision whether to include one institution in this category or exclude another one. As outlined in the introduction, this report will only include academic programmes that have a general (as opposed to specific/sectoral) orientation towards the field of PA.
There are a few institutions of this type in Hungary: the Centre for Public Affairs Studies at the Budapest University of Economic Sciences, the Századvég School of Politics and Central European University’s (CEU) Department of Political Science. Another organisation, the Faculty of Business and Management at Janus Pannonius University (Pécs), is about to launch a two-year master’s of public management programme for practitioners already holding a graduate diploma. The focus of these programmes is primarily on public policy and public management.
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