Soft Authoritarian Transformation of Higher Education in Hungary: Taming Academic Freedom with Neoliberal Precarity
I took this photo during my fieldwork in Budapest in January 2023. It is the dark entrance hall of the Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) Faculty of Humanities building. Despite being mid-term, the space is empty and unlit because the university was forced to shut the campus for in-person classes and transition to online education due to an inability to afford heating costs.
Zahra Jafarova
In the shifting landscape of European higher education, neoliberal reforms used to be celebrated as tools for financial efficiency and institutional autonomy. But how does such a market-oriented framework function when it is instrumentalized by a regime drifting away from democracy towards authoritarianism? In Hungary, the transformation of the university system stands out as a flagship project of the Orbán administration, serving as a critical case study in how neoliberal mechanisms can be systematically repurposed to reshape the boundaries of academic freedom.
In my article recently published in Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, I utilize the concept of soft authoritarianism to theorize how neoliberal mechanisms are utilized for controlling universities. Drawing on 25 qualitative interviews conducted in Hungary and Austria, this study explores three central mechanisms: (1) governance change that shifts decision-making to private foundations, (2) creating parallel institutions for research and teaching, and (3) selective coercion to signal the punitive capacity of the government. Together, these dynamics produce a system of neoliberal precarity, where academic freedom is not eliminated through open repression, but disciplined through establishment of structural insecurity.
Governance Reforms (Modellváltás)
A crucial mechanism of this transformation is the “model change” reforms that were presented by the government as a step toward greater institutional autonomy (Kováts, 2023). Since 2018, 75% of public universities in Hungary have been transformed, transferring decision-making power within universities from academic senates to boards of private foundations (Pimenta & Rónay, 2022) that own the universities.
As a result of model change, private foundation boards became decision-making bodies controlling budgets, hiring practices, and strategic priorities. The regime achieved indirect control by planting politically loyal individuals, including high-profile government ministers and regime-aligned business elites to these boards. Often these board members hold lifetime appointments ensuring conservative control regardless of future political changes.
Model-changed universities lost their public institution status; faculty were stripped of their public service status and the protections of tenure. The regime introduced contract-based employment where job security is contingent on neoliberal metrics such as publication outputs and grant acquisition. This structural insecurity now functions as a tool of discipline; by forcing faculty to focus on financial survival, the regime successfully diverts attention away from politically sensitive studies.
The Rise of Parallel Institutions for Ideological Dominance
While the model change allowed the regime to capture existing public universities from within, it simultaneously sought to bypass traditional academic spaces by building and heavily investing in a parallel infrastructure of ideologically aligned institutions (Dillabough & Peto, 2024) to expand the regime-friendly ideological knowledge production in Hungary. Central to this infrastructure are institutions such as the National University of Public Service (UPS) and Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC). The establishment of UPS ensured that the recruitment and educational programs of public servants are structured to serve the ruling party. Similarly, MCC has become a centre for regime-aligned intellectuals and political lobbying that were tasked to legitimize the regime’s ideological projects. In contrast to neoliberal logic, where resource allocation is justified by fair and open competition, these institutions are funded far beyond competitive necessity. For example, in 2020, MCC’s endowment of approximately €1.3 billion represents more funding than the entire public higher education system in Hungary (Kovacs-Angel, 2021).
In addition to these educational institutions, the government has established several ideologically aligned research centres, such as the Veritas Historical Research Institute, the Centre for Fundamental Rights and others. These centres produce scholarship in fields that the regime has special interest ideologically, such as national history, minority rights, and judicial independence (Trencsényi, 2021). By channelling research funding into these centres the regime ensures that sensitive topics are studied mainly within their ideological narratives, while counter-narratives are marginalized. This creates a system where knowledge production is steered through financial tools rather than open censorship, excluding openly targeted fields.
When Soft Authoritarianism Fails
While the soft aspect of transformation relies on repurposed neoliberal mechanisms, the authoritarian nature of the regime is revealed when these indirect methods prove insufficient, for example in the case of the forced relocation of Central European University (CEU), intervention into resistance at the University of Theatre and Film Arts (SZFE) (Jafarova & Buckner, 2024), and the elimination of programs in sociology, social anthropology, and gender studies. These actions signal a clear punitive capacity, demonstrating that the regime is willing to deploy legal and administrative coercion to establish control of academic spaces.
The Cost of Academic Freedom
The soft authoritarian reforms in Hungary have created a stratified academic environment where academic freedom comes at a cost. Universities that avoided the model change reforms maintained better conditions for academic freedom due to governance structures remaining free from direct political interference. However, these institutions remain chronically underfunded, forcing faculty to work under precarious financial conditions and even forcing universities to shut down campuses for in-person classes due to an inability to afford heating costs.
Conversely, model-changed universities offer significantly higher salaries, but this financial advantage comes at the expense of academic freedom, as faculty lost their tenure and are now evaluated by neoliberal metrics that set indirect limitations to exercise freedom in research, teaching, and expression. In this new system, the most advantageous positions are occupied by scholars of parallel institutions and research centres; faculty here enjoy stable careers and secured funding, yet this emerging academic elite is driven by ideological conformity and regime expectations. Ultimately, these reforms have fundamentally transformed the Hungarian higher education system into a mechanism that reshaped knowledge production, narrowing the space for diverse scholarship and effectively taming academic freedom through structural insecurity and neoliberal precarity.
Hungary provides an alarming example of how governments can repurpose neoliberal mechanisms to utilize university campuses as ideologically safe spaces. This study reveals that soft authoritarianism does not require the elimination of dissent; instead, it utilizes structural insecurity to fragment the academic community and weaken collective solidarity. By redirecting funding through seemingly objective neoliberal metrics, the regime can gatekeep sensitive research areas like national history studies without resorting to open repression.
Zahra Jafarova is a Research Associate at the Centre for the Study of Canadian & International Higher Education at the University of Toronto, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (Canada). She recently defended her PhD in Higher Education, which examined how historical, political, and institutional forces shape academic freedom. Her research focuses on the policy and politics of higher education, with an emphasis on academic freedom and university autonomy. Her research has been published in Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, Globalisation, Societies and Education, and the Comparative Education Review.
Bibliography
Dillabough, J. A., & Peto, A. (2024, May 4). New deceptions: How illiberalism is hijacking the university. University World News. https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20240501143215958
Jafarova, Z., & Buckner, E. (2024). Tweeting the academic resistance in Turkey and Hungary: From cultural crisis to defending the nation. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 0(0), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2024.2385549
Kovacs-Angel, M. (2021, March 29). Százmilliárdokat adott a kormány a NER elitképzőjének, már látszik, hogy hová folyik tovább a pénz. 24.Hu. https://24.hu/fn/gazdasag/2021/03/29/mathias-corvinus-collegium-mcc-balasy-gyula-kommunikacio/
Kováts, G. (2023). University Governance Reform in an Illiberal Democracy: Public Interest Trusts in Hungary. In Accelerating the Future of Higher Education (pp. 186–204). Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004680371_012
Pimenta, C. L. R., & Rónay, Z. (2022). Governance models of Hungarian higher education: From Humboldtian to State-controlled model. Rivista Di Storia Dell’Educazione, 9(2), Article 2. https://doi.org/10.36253/rse-12335
Trencsényi, B. (2021, April 26). Notes from the Underground: Academic Freedom, (Un)Civil Society, and “Kulturkampf” in Hungary [Billet]. TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research. https://trafo.hypotheses.org/27529