More movement of students in Europe

At the moment I am writing from Budapest, an amazing city that I have visited several times over the last fifteen years. For well known reasons there has not been much immigration to Hungary. Today that is slowly changing and I have found one thing that is interesting in the context of my two previous posts on the value of diversity connected to the international competition for talent. Hungarian universities have a very good reputation and they have realized that they can make money by attracting foreign students. Therefore they now have courses and programmes in English.

For instance, you can now graduate from medical school in Budapest without speaking Hungarian and this is an interesting alternative to students from countries where it is extremely difficult to get accepted at medical school, like Sweden. This way they attract students that never would have considered Eastern Europe otherwise. (Sadly, many western Europeans are still very prejudiced about the new EU member states.) The Hungarian universities do this because it is good for their economy, but it also brings a mix of young scholars to a country that can definitely benefit from more diversity.

So, this is another factor that makes people move within and to Europe. Hungary is not the only example and we will see more of it.

/KristianRibberstrőm