Economics students’ migrations in the Hungarian higher education system

Abstract

The Hungarian Higher Education has faced several structural challenges since the regime change of 1990. The ‘golden age’ seems to be over and the government tends to impose severe limits on institutions regarding the number of state-financed students, the minimal application points and the institutions’ missions. These new aspects influence the application procedures, as students are eager to achieve the highest price-value combination on the education market, which leads to internal and external migrations. In this study, we focus on the former, by using the agglomeration analysis of higher education institutions. We apply a modified Universal Law of Gravity to gather information about social and/or economic phenomena. On the level of single individuals, these types of decisions are random, but on the collective level, they can be characterized by certain principles and rules. This study explores the changes in the agglomeration areas and the limiting factors related to colleges and universities, offering economic education between 2004 and 2014. This period is adequate, as to identify the peculiarities and different influences of the market, the government, and the global trends and to identify the new spatial roles of the institutions.

Keywords

• migration
• higher education
• gravity model
• student applications