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

ZOLTÁN PÁLFYof the students came from state-employee or army officer families, while,in 1924, almost 30% belonged to the same background). Yet, thereoccurred a significant change in the prevalent career objectives. Civil servicewas less and less pursued by the sons of the Hungarian “middle class.”Instead, the younger generation of students (and the dislocated amongthem) with such a background were pushed towards other occupationsthan that of their fathers. Thus, while the refugees had the lion’s share inright-wing radicalism throughout the 1920s, the dislocated studentsunderwent a similar shift in their professional orientation from the secondhalf of the decade onwards. 28In May 1925, a meeting was held, with the participation of PrimeMinister István Bethlen and the Minister of Education, Kunó Klebelsberg,to discuss the situation of students from the lost territories. Havingin mind that few diplomas were accepted in Romania, they agreed thatstudying at home would serve the cause of the Transylvanian Hungariansbetter. Also, in order to urge students who had already joined the universitiesof “Trianon Hungary” to return home upon completion of studies,they suggested that these students should be issued diplomas which wouldnot be valid in Hungary. By 1928-1929, it was a consensus of policy-makersthat it would be better for ethnic Hungarians from Transylvania to pursuetheir studies at home. In order to enhance this, a scheme of financialaid for Kolozsvár students was proposed, together with a set of measuresfacilitating post-graduate studies in Hungary. Thus, a small number (from20 to 50 in average) of post-graduate scholarships were offered. At first,there were post-graduate students in medicine and law, then, from theearly 1930s onwards, an increasing number of technical faculty studentsappeared in these programs. 29Nevertheless, in Budapest, at the beginning of the 1924-1925 academicyear, 3,095 students (32.8% of the total number of students) bornin the lost territories were registered, and 1,450 out of them (15.3%) werefrom Romania. 30 Overall, by 1924, the share of students originating fromthe lost territories decreased to roughly two-thirds of its 1920-1921 size.Yet, these students still comprised slightly more than 30% of the studentbody of the main universities. In economics, their number increased from286 to 435, which made up 32% of the total number. The highest rate ofthe students from the lost territories (39%), was registered in the VeterinaryCollege, even though this meant only 113 in absolute numbers. Contrastedto the 1920-1921 distribution among branches of study, a significantswitch in career orientation can be observed, since the number of“refugee” students in the Technical University increased from 606 to 756,while the number of those enrolled in the “classical” faculties decreasedto 1,704. 31 Measured by the residency of parents, the Hungarian minority190