Neoliberalism Meets Minority Nationalism: The Politics of Hungarian Higher Education in Romania

A Hungarian public university was one of the main demands of the leaders of Hungarians from Romania after the fall of the communist regime in 1989. Almost three decades later, higher education in Hungarian has developed into a precarious, fragmented, and divided institutional assemblage, solidified around two main components, the Hungarian line of study at the well-established public Babes-Bolyai University and the new private university Sapientia, reliant on the Hungarian government's financial support. The article investigates how Hungarians from Romania, whose persistent ethnic politics brought them extensive recognition, and who were successful in creating a Hungarian parallel society, failed to converge in achieving one of their most important goals. By unpacking this case of intra-ethnic unmixing, it shows how institutional arrangements affect the stakes and means of the struggle for minority rights, and how structural asymmetry in numbers and power carries disadvantage into the life of institutions.