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The aim of the Programme is to increase the number of international students who come to study in Hungary, applying for study programmes primarily in foreign languages. From September 2016 the number of students attending full-time study programmes as Stipendium Hungaricum scholarship holders may exceed 4500.

The Stipendium Hungaricum Programme was launched as a pilot project in 2013 with 60 applicants, and by January 2016 approximately 1500 scholarship holders had been enrolled students in full-time, mostly English language academic programmes. Based on the applications, about 3000 students may start their studies as scholarship holders in September, at the beginning of the academic year 2016-17, which is the double of the total number of students admitted to the programme in the past three years, only from one application round.

26 higher education institutions submitted a successful application to the Tempus Public Foundation for the Programme, offering altogether 420 study programmes, which means that the programme covers the full scale of academic programmes offered by Hungarian higher education institutions. Participating in the programme, the institutions improve the academic quality of their programmes offered in foreign languages, they promote recruitment for these courses, facilitate their institutional transparency, and due to the growing number of students, they may achieve a better position in the international rankings.

After the call for applications closed, 13.129 applications arrived from 46 countries for 3200 awardable scholarships. The application deadline, originally planned for 16 March, was extended to 21 March, and in this way, 846 more applications were submitted. Jordanian, Syrian and Ukrainian students could complete their applications untill the end of March, about which further information was provided on the website of the programme.

It is among the long-term goals of the Stipendium Hungaricum Programme to find and attract global talents, offering them the outstanding quality of the Hungarian higher education system. For this reason, it was an outstanding achievement to have the most successful application round of the scholarship programme this year, in close cooperation with several other participants, such as the Ministry of Human Capacities, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the higher education institutions. The number of submitted applications varies from country to country: the most applications were submitted from Pakistan (about 38 times more than the quota available for them), after that Kazakhstan (with 13 times more applications than the quota), Nigeria (11 times more), Cambodia (9 times more) and Mongolia (7 times more) followed. In total, four times more applications were received than the available number of scholarships.

Last modified: 22-04-2016