New National Excellence Programme
QUICK: programme-initiative
New National Excellence Programme
Country:
Hungary
Education level:
Higher Education
Year start:
2016
Status:
Ongoing
Short summary:
The New National Excellence Programme is a scholarship programme supporting students (all tertiary levels: BA, MA, PhD), teachers and researchers developing their research career path.
Description and objectives:
The predecessor programme, National Excellence Programme, was funded from European Social Fund (ESF) resources. The New National Excellence Programme started in 2016 and was financed from the central budget of Hungary. The programme’s budget was HUF 2.2 billion (around 6 million euro) in 2016, HUF 4 billion (around 11 million euro) in 2017, HUF 4 billion in 2018, HUF 4 billion in 2019 and HUF 4 billion in 2020. The responsible organisations are the Ministry for Innovation and Technology and the coordinating entity managing the program: the National Research, Development and Innovation Office.
Reach:
In 2019, 25 universities were involved in the programme. In 2020, the number of participating universities was 24 (due to university mergers). Through these institutions altogether more than 4500 students apply for the scholarship per year. The number of supported students is around 2000 per year who carry out their own researches and participate at the so-called ÚNKP conferences of their universities. The programme aims to continue this number of students.
Impact:
The programme helps to secure the supply of researchers, provide career support and reduce dropouts. The research projects of the students funded by the programme are implemented at the universities and the results are published on their websites. A summary-video (Hungarian only) was produced by the National Research, Development and Innovation Office to promote the programme (see video tab)
Budget and funding model:
Between 2016 and 2019 the programme was funded by the state central budget. From 2020 onwards, the programme is funded by the Innovation Fund (also from the state central budget). The coordinating organisation (the Ministry for Innovation and Technology) allocates a fixed subsidy to each of the universities involved. The amount of support is re-calculated each year based on to the performance of the universities (the number of PhD graduates per year). This subsidy is transferred to the universities who pay the scholarship to their own students. Every university is supported with a so-called institutional support which is the 40% of its own students’ scholarship amount. This amount is to finance the students’ researches and the organizational costs.
Summary - New National Excellence Programme (Hungarian...
Friday, 26 February 2021
A summary video showing the results of resarch carrried out by students, teachers and researchers that received scholarships through the New National Excellence Programme.