Prime Minister Orban and Hungary's dejected class of 2012

Andras had hoped to study economics at one of Hungary's top universities, but Prime Minister Viktor Orban's new shake-up of higher education has ruined his and thousands of other school-leavers' plans.

"I have to leave the country," Andras, 19, told AFP at his century-old Budapest grammar school, where he is in his final year. "I am hoping to be able to study in Warsaw instead, with an EU grant."

Orban has come under fire at home and abroad with sweeping reforms of institutions such as the judiciary and new media laws that his many critics say are endangering democracy in the European Union member state.

But less well known are his reforms, announced in January, of Hungary's universities that have left bright young Hungarians like Andras, as well as the universities themselves and many others confused, worried and angry.

According to Maria Heller, director of the Institute of Sociology at Eotvos Lorand University (ELTE), Hungary's biggest and oldest, the reforms slash the number of fully state-subsidised places to 31,000 from 53,400 last year -- out of a total 100,000.

"We can accept some cuts in view of the economic situation, but the way this has been done is absolutely unacceptable," Heller told AFP in her office at ELTE's campus, calling the reforms "harebrained".

Tuition fees are expected to rise too, depending on the course, and those lucky enough to get state money have to sign a "contract" obliging them to work for a Hungarian employer for a period twice as long as their period of study.

"The studies of students are financed from the taxes paid by Hungarian citizens," the education ministry said in comments emailed to AFP.

"Consequently, it is very important for the Hungarian government to benefit from this investment and this is the reason why students have to stay and work in Hungary."

Critics say that at the very least this contravenes the spirit of the EU, which the 10-million-strong former communist country joined in 2004, and that it may violate the 27-nation bloc's treaties.

"The contract takes away my freedom," said Andras's classmate Reka, 18, who has instead applied to study at York University in Britain. "I don't understand how they (the government) think the European Union works."

She and Andras are the lucky ones, coming from relatively well-off families. Many poorer pupils, not least from outside the capital and from the Roma community, will now not go to university at all.

The aim of the reforms, the government says, is to fix a creaking and inefficient system that is producing too many economists and lawyers and not enough engineers, scientists and doctors.

But key details remain unclear, such as how the government hopes to encourage more students to opt for science.

Andras Vertes, director of central Europe's biggest economic research institute GKI in Budapest, says that Orban was right that the system needed fixing, but that his assessment was "simplistic" and the reforms were "very, very radical."

"We needed reforms -- but not these reforms," Vertes told AFP. "If you need more engineers you have to have better teachers in physics, chemistry and biology in secondary schools."

From the around 4,000 state-financed university places to study economics in the current academic year there will be only 100 from September, all of them in the capital, Vertes said. For law the reduction is from 750 to 70.

That the system produces too many humanities students is "the biggest myth," Csaba Jelinek, 24, a sociology student and member of the Hallgatoi Halozat (Student Network) fighting the revamp, told AFP in a downtown Budapest cafe.

"Several studies show that those within humanities easily find jobs ... of course there is the phenomenon of youth unemployment, but it is not specifically those within humanities," he said.

What also irks Hungarians is that they say the reforms were cobbled together without proper consultation -- the education ministry denies this -- with no one quite sure how the new system will work.

"Universities do not even know how they will be financed from September onwards ... We are in a kind of black tunnel," Heller said.

Orban wants students to be able to take out a new kind of student loan for their tuition fees, but no one knows the exact terms yet.

Plus, Vertes says, the government's sums don't add up.

The interest rate for students will have to be well below the current market rates of 10-15 percent demanded by banks for a personal loan, leaving the government to pay the difference -- and costing in the long run more than the reforms are saving.

"It is like power is taking over their brains," said Reka with a sigh.

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