Aim higher, reach further.
  • Hungarian Student Rallies Gather Pace

    Hungary’s undergraduate students Wednesday continued demonstrating against the government’s heavy-handed move to cut state subsidies for university tuition, saying the government snubbed them.

    The demonstration followed a massive protest on Monday after the government said it would reduce the number of students eligible for free tertiary education amid austerity measures. According to the government, it’s a move designed to force students to better plan their careers and push them to graduate in a timely fashion, which would reduce unemployment among people with university degrees.

    “How come university undergraduates are demonstrating? These changes don’t even affect them,” said Andras Giro-Szasz, a government spokesman.

    “These changes have been thoroughly discussed with the student organizations last year. I wonder why they are surprised,” said Viktor Orban, Hungary’s prime minister.

    “These changes are not against the students, but for them,” the human resources ministry’s state secretariat responsible for education said in a statement Monday.

    Undergraduate students, who said the government had failed to address their needs and concerns, staged a protest on Wednesday at Budapest’s Technical University and took to the streets.


    Popular on WSJ