Accesul la educaţie al maghiarilor din România. O analiză multivariată

Abstract

During the transition period, the topic of Hungarian university-level higher education in Romania has been very intensely debated as its polemic has been often characterized by ethnicist and nationalist arguments. One major issue of the debate is, however, that, in Romania, Hungarians have lower chances of access at tertiary education than the Romanian citizens. The present study aims to clarify the situation of the distribution and the covariates of educational, and subsequently social, chances among citizens of Romanian and Hungarian ethnicity in Romania. Using the consolidated data of the Romanian Public Opinion Barometer of 1998-2004 (N = 11 040) our multivariate analyses start from three models of the status achievement: the ethnic determination model, the social reproduction model and the structural mobility model. Though bivariate analyses indicate that there is significant gap of educational in educational chances for Hungarians, measured through educational achievement, multivariate analysis proves that the hypothesis of lower educational chances of Hungarians from Transylvania does not hold. However, educational inequalities seem to be more an interregional issue: Seklerland, with an overwhelming majority of Hungarians, provides significantly lower chances of attaining a higher education diploma than the rest of Transylvania. One explanation for this could rely on the modernization deficit of the region. The topic requires further research in order to clarify the impact of the diverse covariates on career decisions and status attainment.