Hungarian university leader says reform delivered "a lot of positive effects" despite flaws

A leader of a Hungarian university has said that the ‘public-interest foundations’ model for universities produced measurable improvements in research performance, internationalisation and institutional flexibility, while acknowledging that some aspects require revision.

Ákos Domahidi, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer at Obuda University, said in an interview with News Tank on 27/07/2026: “There are a lot of very successful parts of this model and there are some which should be changed. It's important not to say 'let's do a complete change,' because it's not true that everything was wrong."

He is referring to the model change introduced in 2019, when the Hungarian government transferred most of the country's public universities to public-interest foundations called…