Közép-európai Egyetem | |
Latin: Universitas Europae Centralis | |
Type | Private |
---|---|
Established | 1991 |
Endowment | $880 million |
Rector | Michael Ignatieff |
Academic staff
|
399 |
Students | 1,380 |
Postgraduates | 940 |
440 | |
Location | Budapest, Hungary |
Campus | Urban |
Website | ceu.edu |
Central European University (CEU) is a graduate-level, English-language university accredited in the U.S. and Hungary and located in Budapest. The university offers degrees in the social sciences, humanities, law, public policy, business management, environmental science, and mathematics.
CEU has more than 1500 students from 100 countries and 300 faculty members from more than 30 countries. CEU was founded by philanthropist George Soros, who has provided an endowment of US$880 million, making the university one of the wealthiest in Europe. It is considered as one of the most prestigious universities in Central Europe for social sciences and humanities.
CEU has two schools, including the School of Public Policy and CEU Business School, 13 academic departments, and 17 research centers.
CEU evolved from a series of lectures held at the IUC in Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia, (now Croatia). In the Spring of 1989, as historical change was gathering momentum in the region the need for a new, independent, international university was being considered. The minutes of the gathering held in April 1989 records a discussion among scholars such as Rudolf Andorka, , Márton Tardos, István Teplán, and from Budapest, William Newton-Smith and Kathleen Wilkes from Oxford, Jan Havranek, Michal Illner and Jiří Kořalka from Prague, Krzysztof Michalski and Włodzimierz Siwiński from Warsaw.
The University was founded in 1991 in response to the fall of the Socialist Bloc. The founding vision was to create a university dedicated to examining the contemporary challenges of "open societies" and democratization. The initial aim was to create a Western-modeled yet distinctly Central European institution that would foster inter-regional cooperation and educate a new corps of regional leaders to help usher in democratic transitions across the region. It was originally located in Prague, but because of "political and financial conflict between its founder and Czech government" represented by Vaclav Klaus it moved to campus in Budapest.