Nation-Building and Contested Identities: Romanian & Hungarian ...

ZOLTÁN PÁLFYRegarding the altered pattern of student migration in the early twenties,more precisely the 1920-1921 academic year discussed above, it seemsrelevant to look at the distribution of students among the three universities,namely the University of Budapest, the Budapest Technical University,and the University of Kolozsvár in the last peace year, that is 1913-1914. A comparison of these universities gives some hints at theproportions of the student exodus (from Romania to Hungary), occurringas a consequence of the new political situation after the war (see Table 3).In the second semester of the 1913-1914 academic year, the total numberof students in the three universities was 11,887. 24 In 1914-1916, all universitieslost students for obvious reasons: enrollment to the army. This patternnevertheless changed in the following two years. Thus, while therewas a spectacular increase of the number of students in Budapest (from5,230 in 1916 to 17,920 in 1918, almost equaling the highest pre-war number),the number of students in the University of Kolozsvár continuouslydecreased during the war (from 2,119 in 1914 to less than one third of thisnumber in 1918). Owing to the uneven effect of the war, the influx (evenif not in massive numbers) of students into the capital had already commencedduring the last year of the war, long before the ratification of newpolitical borders. 25A comparison of the 1920-1921 refugee contingent from Romaniaand the 1913-1914 student body of Kolozsvár can be made in two respects(see Table 4 below). First, one has to look at the number of students in thedifferent faculties, then at the impact of the refugees on universities inBudapest. 26 Regarding the distribution of students from Kolozsvár andBudapest among faculties related to the total number of students in thegiven university, in Kolozsvár there was a much stronger orientation ofstudents towards law and political science than towards any other branchesof study. This holds true even if one compares the percentage of lawstudents enrolled at Kolozsvár University to that of Budapest. Medicine,on the contrary, is far less preferred in the former university than in thelatter. Related to the share of students in the given universities, pharmacologylags behind in Budapest, while there is lesser preference for thearts among Kolozsvár students.In the 1920-1921 academic year, the influx of refugees altered thedepartmental distribution. According to Table 2, refugees averaged 40.4% inthe “classical” faculties, an almost equal proportion (38.8%) in technicaldepartments, while the lowest degree of presence was recorded in economics(29.0%). The percentage of Transylvanian refugees among the totalnumber of students is relevant in view of the overall impact of refugees onthe growth of the student population in Budapest. Thus, students from territoriesceded to Romania had a proportionate share in law and engineer-188