In Erasmus+ higher education institutions which were awarded the Erasmus Charter of Higher Education (ECHE) are eligible to submit applications. This provides a general quality assurance framework for European and international cooperation implemented by higher education institutions in Erasmus+. The Charter is valid for the complete period of the Programme. In Hungary, 54 higher education institutions have been awarded the Erasmus Charter of Higher Education, which is 84.4% of the institutions and covers the whole range of state institutions, and of the non-state institutions only smaller church institutions have no Erasmus Charter for Higher Education.
In 2019 altogether 50 higher education institutions with the Erasmus Charter of Higher Education implemented Erasmus+ higher education mobility projects. Some of them will end in 2020, or rather due to the coronavirus pandemic, on the 31st of January, 2021. More than 8,000 people participated in the programmes of the European Union, including the highest student mobility (61%), teacher mobility (21%) and staff mobility (18%).
The aim of the Central European Exchange Programme for University Studies (CEEPUS) is to enable student and teacher mobility between partner institutions in the field of higher education, to organize special courses and student trips, and to support long-term professional cooperation in the region. The national coordination of the programme is provided by the Tempus Public Foundation.
The interstate scholarships serve the implementation of individual mobilities for higher education students, teachers and researchers based on a bilateral agreement between Hungary and another state. In addition, project-based interstate scholarships (DAAD, Hubert Curien – Balaton Programme) and Hungarian state scholarship programmes (Hungarian Eötvös State Scholarship, Collegium Hungaricum) are also available. Interstate scholarships include not only personal mobility, but also the organization of summer university courses and the establishment of bilateral research projects.
Student Mobility
In recent years, the number of students who took part in Erasmus+ mobility has been above 4,000 (4,309 students approved for projects awarded in 2017, 4,692 students for 2018 and 4,893 students for the 2019 application year). A higher proportion (67% of the mobility in 2019) is mobility for study purposes and one third of the travels is for traineeship.
In the case of mobility for study purposes, the most popular target countries were Germany, Italy and Spain. The programme provides extra funding for socially disadvantaged students – students received this extra funding in 17% of the mobility implemented so far. Furthermore, the financial support of disabled or chronically ill students also receives special attention, which is an incentive for their participation in the programme.
Participants of the mobility assessed their mobility in the form of a questionnaire after their travel. For the last three years, the general satisfaction of the participants with the achieved mobility was over 90% (96% in both 2018 and 2019).
Inward mobility was higher than the outward mobility of Hungarian students for a long time, (more students choose Hungary as a destination country than Hungarian students choose other foreign countries), but the numbers were more balanced in the last two years. In the application year 2019, altogether 4,834 students arrived to Hungary, out of them 4,225 students participated in mobility for study purposes, and 618 students participated in traineeship.
The Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility Programme also provides opportunities for mobilities outside Europe. The programme is open for higher education institutions for student mobility, apprenticeship training (from 2018) and staff mobility for education and training purposes. In the application year 2017, around 22 institutions, in 2018, 25 institutions, and in 2019, 28 institutions have received support, and about a thousand students and educators attended each year. The proportion of students in these types of mobility was approximately 31% in 2019, within which the number of inward mobility (300 persons) is much higher than the number of students participating in outgoing mobility (108 persons).
One of the important goals of the Campus Mundi programme is to promote student mobility, increase students' competences and employability in the labour market. The programme offers three types of scholarships from European Union and domestic sources to almost any country in the world: part-time training, internships or short study visits. The application process is coordinated by the Tempus Public Foundation. In 2019, similarly to the previous year, there were 2065 successful applicants.In part-time internships, students may submit applications on a continuous basis, in a short study tour application type, there are two application rounds per year.
One type of scholarship programme is the Campus Mundi, which is available for part-time training under inter-state agreements and is available to Hungarian students participating in part-time training in a Stipendium Hungaricum Programme partner country related to their studies in Hungary. During part-time training, students must have received at least 10 ECTS credits in the institution, or have completed at least 20 hours per week of courses or research activities. 89 applications have been submitted for the 2019-2020 academic year. Students selected a total of 13 target countries out of a possible 26, of which China and Jordan were the most popular. In the 2019-2020 school year, 57 students travelled with this type of Campus Mundi programme for one or two semesters.
The CEEPUS programme is open to student scholarships of 3 to 5 months and 1 to 2 months. The participating domestic higher education institutions hosted 248 students in Hungary during the 2018-2019 academic year, while 209 students had the opportunity to spend a scholarship period in another CEEPUS country, which could include: Albania, Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Northern Macedonia, Croatia, Kosovo, Poland, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Slovenia.
The Visegrád Foundation's mobility grants are also used to gain international experience. The Fund supports studies at master and post-doctoral level (doctoral or post-doctoral level) in Central and Eastern Europe or the Balkans, for a duration of 1-4 semesters and a period of 1-2 semesters for EUR 2,500 per semester. In 2019, 7 Hungarian students applied and 4 won scholarships in this programme, while 27 students came to Hungary.
The Makovecz Student Scholarship Programme offers Hungarian students from Hungary and neighbouring countries the opportunity to gain experience abroad. This includes inter-institutional co-training opportunities provided at national and transnational higher education institutions for a maximum period of 5 months. The programme involved Hungarian language-based universities in the Carpathian Basin. There are basically two possible forms of student scholarship:
- Full semester (5 months) mobility, whereby the students undertake part-time studies at the host institution as part of their student status (credit counting);
- short-term mobility (1-4 months) to participate in shorter study tours and to support students' scientific activities.
In the 2017-18 academic year, nine programme owners from foreign institutions and nineteen Hungarian universities and colleges developed co-operation, which involved nearly four hundred students in part-time courses.
Academic Staff Mobility
The higher education sub-programme of Erasmus+ also promotes the mobility of teachers and non-teaching staff. The purpose of the tender is to support educational and training activities of 2-60 days duration. Subsidies are available for travel and subsistence costs (eg. accommodation, meals), depending on the distance and the cost of living in the host country. In total, staff numbers have increased slightly over the last three years. In the academic year of 2017, 2,326 teachers and higher education staff members, in 2018, 2,651 ones participated in mobility programmes, and in 2019, 3,140 were awarded.
Each year, nearly 600 teachers and 200 other higher education workers are mobilized in partnership with non-European countries through the Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility Programme. The number of outgoing and ingoing trainers and the staff was nearly the same in 2019 (411 outgoings, 440 ingoings).
The CEEPUS programme also provides mobility opportunities for teachers in Central and Eastern Europe. As a result, 317 trainers came to Hungary in 2019, while outward mobility affected 251.
Mobility of university professors is also possible with the Makovecz Programme announced by the Hungarian state. The Makovecz Teaching Scholarship Programme supports delegating qualified (university professor or docent) teachers to teach in foreign higher education institutions in Hungarian. In the 2017-18 academic year, the programme included about forty Hungarian teachers working in institutions abroad.