Students protest against tuition fees in Hungary

Over a thousand Hungarian students took to the streets on Monday evening in Budapest in protest of the government's plan to cut subsidies to finance college tuition briefly blocking a bridge over the Danube in freezing weather.

The students marched to parliament after a meeting, carrying torches and shouting ‘The University is Ours’ and ‘Free University’. In a peaceful protest, they called for education secretary Rózsa Hoffmann to resign and, escorted by police, later blocked another central bridge for hours.

The Reuters news agency quotes said history student László Bernáth. ”The government has announced out of the blue that they will drastically cut the number of state-financed places in higher education, to 10,000 from next year, so, Hungarian higher education will practically be transformed into a place churning out rich idiots."

The government of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, struggling to keep the budget deficit below the EU's ceiling of 3 percent of output, announced last week that from next year, it would fully finance only 10,480 students, two-thirds fewer than this year. The government will partly finance the tuition of 46,000 more and offer subsidized preferential-rate student loans.

There were demonstrations outside Budapest, as well. In two cities with important universities, Szeged and Miskolc, students occupied public space inside government buildings. The government measures may mean the end of the university in Szeged, one protester said.

In response to a student leader, the Prime minister wrote a letter saying that “there has been no surprise in our decisions. Everything has been discussed openly.”