– “If the pyramid doesn’t have a base and we only focus on its top, on industry-related innovation, then after a while the whole thing won’t work”

In the summer, he chose a new pro-model rector in the person of BME Charaf Hassan, who until then was dean of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Informatics. It has been known for some time that the government would steer higher education institutions in the direction of foundation maintenance. Does the election of the rector mean that the university’s employees are open to change?

Last spring, we had a survey among university employees, in which the vast majority of the 600 respondents wanted: if more precise conditions for the change of model are revealed, then ask the opinion of university citizens before a possible change. In other words, their problem is not with the model change, but with the exact conditions and circumstances under which it takes place. They want there to be an information phase first, to leave time for university citizens to form an opinion. The devil is always in the details, and the experience so far in the first wave of model changes was that they signed an almost blank piece of paper with the universities, nowhere did they know what awaited them. BME is mostly made up of engineers, we like to see the exact details before jumping into something. And, of course, there are quite a few of us who do not like the fact that the state does not want to maintain universities, even on a principled basis.

From this point of view, you are already in a better position, since in addition to BME, there are only three universities left under state maintenance (ELTE, Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music and Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts). In this way, they can already see what would await BME in the event of a possible model change.

Yes, most universities are already operated by a public interest trust foundation, but this is not really an option for the University of Technology. This is where a lot of EU tenders end up, without which neither research nor student mobility would be solved. If we go into a model change that results in even less European money coming here, it means the death of the university. As far as I know, the rector is thinking in terms of a business association-like model, he wants to involve large Hungarian companies in financing the university. Of course, this also has significant risks.

You would think that market players would bring a lot of resources to the university. What’s wrong with that?

The university is not a company, the activities here cannot be directly denominated in forints. Neither research, nor education, nor the training of students, drives financial profit in the short term. The tasks of a large university also include the implementation of basic research. There are many things that people do just because they are curious about the answers. These researches are usually cut short when a university is streamlined in a corporate direction. And I think this would again be suicide for the university and a very big loss for the country as well. It is generally accepted in scientific theory that it is impossible to predict in advance which research will lead to great results and scientific breakthroughs. The system only works if there is a very broad base, many researchers are active in many different directions, and those who already work a little closer to things that can be used in everyday life can choose from this. If the pyramid does not have a base, and we only focus on its top, on industry-related innovation, then after a while the whole thing will not work. Industry’s needs are usually short-term, they plan 1-2 years in advance, but universities have to think long-term, because what if the world turns upside down in the meantime? If we don’t let people explore other directions, there won’t be people who can easily adapt to a possible new situation. But of course the university has bigger problems as well.

What could be a bigger problem than that?

It is much more painful that people are constantly leaving and young people are not coming here, because the salaries are what they are. The question of changing the model is inseparable from the financing of universities, since if someone earns terribly little, does not receive funds for his research, and is told that there will be money in the new system, he will sign almost anything, he will not make wise decisions, he will only look out for his own short-term interests . It’s easy to put a blank check in front of a starving person, he won’t think long.

According to them, are the assumptions that the government deliberately starved the BME so that in the end it would ask for the model change itself, just so that something would happen?

It is clear that the funding of the university is not in order, the 2024 budget was adopted at the end of September, since I have been here – since the nineties – this has never happened. Even the salaries would be raised in vain if the university is falling on us and we don’t have the means to do our work. But it would be useless to increase the budget for building renovations if there are no workers left in it. These two things should be sorted out at the same time, because the BME is terribly underfunded as a whole, and inflation has hit us very hard in recent years. I cannot say for sure what the government’s intention is behind this, whether they want to push us towards public interest foundation maintenance. It is a fact that in the last thirty years, with the exception of a few short periods, the university was constantly in trouble, I don’t remember, for example, that we ever received money for equipment in addition to our salary, and the equipment you see here was obtained by us from grant money or other jobs, or maybe we bought it out of pocket .

In terms of magnitude, how much of the funding do EU funds and tenders account for?

I can’t give you an exact number, but a significant part of the research funds is money of EU origin, if it weren’t for this, we would be in huge trouble. Sometimes it comes directly, like, say, Erasmus funds, and sometimes it flows into the state tender system, and we get it from there. But money is only one thing, and integration into international research is also very important, because no matter how much we are one of the largest universities in the country, we are small on our own. One must be able to participate in conferences, talk with researchers from other countries, teach, and do research abroad for a few weeks or months. If this is not the case, the standard will drop significantly, and this is especially true for student mobility.

In the summer, the Academy of Young Researchers published a study according to which, due to the dispute between the EU and Hungary, not only those researchers who are directly affected by the suspended collaborations are forced out of international collaborations, but also the staff of institutions still eligible for funding. Do you feel something like this?

Yes, there is no doubt that we are suspicious. Especially if we are also sick around the model change, then the willingness to involve us in research projects is not that great. In addition, it happened that we were left out of an international research due to the negligence of the National Research, Development and Innovation Office NKFIH, which is responsible for the administration of many international applications. It’s as if they don’t even care that there are a few universities here from which they could enter these projects. We are a little stinky on the outside, neglected on the inside.

Half a year ago, the open letter was created in which the workers of the four state-run universities demanded a wage settlement; the inclusion of the salary based on the employer’s decision (15-15 percent introduced in 2021-22) into the basic salary and an immediate increase of 50 percent. Balázs Hankó, Minister of Culture and Innovation, negotiated with you as State Secretary at the time. Is there any progress on the matter?

Just before the EP elections, Balázs Hankó held talks with the union representatives of the four large state universities, including me, who then promised that the ministry would come up with a specific offer within two weeks. This has not happened since then, in mid-September State Secretary Veronika Varga-Bajusz started to negotiate with us again from KIM, but she did not invite the union leaders, but the management of the universities individually together with the union leaders. This seems to be a tactic of silencing, and we on the trade union side really don’t like it, but we don’t give up, we work together. Our goal would be to manage the state universities together. I don’t think that there is a need for a different minimum wage at the University of the Arts than, say, at ELTE, the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music or the Fine Arts.

Did the university administration stand behind your demand?

Yes, the rector is fully in favor of settling the wages of university employees. I think he also sees that there is a terrible problem. For example, here at the Faculty of Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering, we are constantly losing weight, we are unable to keep a young researcher here. Financially, there is nothing to fear for anyone who leaves, with this background you can earn better anywhere, but at the same time, for those who have been doing their research here for 10-15 years, it is a terrible big break to stop and leave. Those who are still here are only kept here by their love of work and teaching. And I feel that the ministry is taking advantage of this quite badly.

Where are the students from the protests and actions? Art university students have played an important role in Hungarian history, yet now it seems as if in recent years university students stand up for their teachers much less than gymnasium students.

There are very few students who do not only look ahead and think in terms of what will make the university better for those who will be attending it ten years from now. I think of this as a generational problem, they also have a kind of learned helplessness, they think that no matter what they do, nothing will change. However, here at the university, in addition to the 2,000 or so employees (1,200 of whom are instructors), 24,000 students study, we could have an impact in completely different dimensions if they were also willing to move. But we don’t reach them, and this is largely due to the student representation, which often refuses to convey our messages to the student body, claiming to be apolitical. In addition, we also have a big brake in relation to the fact that we should not politicize during education. After all, why shouldn’t I be able to strictly explain the difficult situation of the university before or after the class?!

In light of all this, what else keeps you here?

I love making an impact on the world. I feel that by trying to assess the condition and threats of the country’s underground water resources by examining the karst waters, I can make a very big profit even in the medium term. If I were to go to a company, I would have to do a task that is not good for anyone but them. I’m afraid that if the university is going to be financed by some big company, then it’s not certain that they will be happy if someone tries to make fun of, say, the environmental pollution activities of that company.