A little over a hundred years ago, in September 1920, the Hungarian National Assembly enacted Act XXV/1920 “On regulating enrollment at universities, technical universities, the Faculty of Economics, and the academies of law.”1 Ending the previous system of unlimited university enrollment, which until then had been guaranteed for every high-school graduate, Article 1 of the law instructed the Minister of Religion and Public Education to determine annually and “based on the recommendation of the academic staff of the relevant department”2 the number of places at universities. Article 2 of the law specified that the new regulations would apply only to incoming students.
Defenders of and apologists for the law—then and since—have argued that the widely perceived “intellectual overproduction,” aggravated by the massive influx of refugees (including many former civil servants) from territories lost to Hungary as a result of the Trianon Treaty, more than justified the ending of...
