The ceremonial opening of the academic year for BME’s international students was held on 2 October 2023. This year, a total of 476 new students started their studies at BME.

Emília Csiszár, vice-rector for international affairs welcomed first-year students and reminded them that joining BME means joining a large international community because BME is a member of EELISA, a university alliance in Europe, which was established by 10 European universities. ‘EELISA is building the university of the future in engineering science. We always tell our prospective students that if they join BME, they will be the students of 10 European universities. EELISA is your gateway to European education and European degrees,’ said Emília Csiszár who finished her speech by expressing her hope that students will look at Budapest as a home away from home after their graduation from the university.

In his speech, András Báló, head of the Department of Higher Education at the Ministry of Culture and Innovation looked back on the nearly thousand-year-old history of higher education in Europe describing how the importance of engineering education grew over time. He emphasized that BME’s predecessor was Europe’s first civil institution of engineering education. Regarding the university’s present state, he said that BME is in the top 5 % of the world’s best universities together with 10 other Hungarian universities. In recent years, the government has made successful efforts to improve the competitiveness of Hungarian universities and will continue to implement these actions in the future as well. One goal is for a Hungarian university to be one of the world’s top 100 universities. András Báló reminded the international students that the value of a degree from BME is not only reflected in international rankings but also by employment prospects as this degree will allow them to find very well-paid jobs almost immediately.