Doctoral schools
Number of PhD students in the doctoral schools
PhD students are extremely important in the academic life of the Faculty, as they represent more than 50% of the total teaching and research staff. The number of publications, grant and corporate project capacity is directly related to the number of PhD students. After obtaining their degree, they are the supply of the teaching and research staff, in the case of a corporate career they expand the Faculty’s industrial network.
The number of PhD students has been rising steadily in recent years. This is partly due to the launch of the four-year programme in 2016 (the same PhD student appears in the statistics for four years instead of three), but also to the PhD duplex and KDP scholarship programmes announced in 2020, which have made doctoral scholarships competitive with corporate salaries.
International students
The Tempus Foundation’s Stipendium Hungaricum programme is an important step towards the internationalisation of our doctoral schools. A large proportion of doctoral students applying for English courses are from the Middle East, Africa and China. During their studies, they receive a scholarship and housing allowance equivalent to that of Hungarian students. The first students participating in this programme graduated in recent years, many of them earned the degree.
The number of students enrolled in the English-language programme is increasing, and is slowly reaching half of the total number of PhD students.
PhD students entering the program
The best indicator of the popularity of doctoral training is the number of new students entering the programme.
The number of Hungarian students enrolled in the four-year course has remained stable at around 20 since 2016, until 2021. The introduction of new scholarship schemes has had an impact, with an increase of more than 50% in the number of Hungarian students enrolled. Including English students, interest in the programme has reached record high levels.
Number of PhD degrees awarded
The most important indicator of the success of doctoral training is, of course, the number of doctoral degrees awarded. The previous three-year programme did not impose any time limit for this, unlike the recently introduced four-year programme, which requires the submission of a dissertation within three years after the complex examination, which is a strong motivation to PhD students to complete their doctoral studies.
The number of degrees awarded is around 20-30 per year, with a slight increase expected in the near future due to the specificities of the four-year programme and the increasing number of students. The two doctoral schools are about the same in terms of the number of degrees awarded.