Earthquake-Resistant Buildings and Space Industry Cooperation: BME in the Turkish and Indian press

Dozens of print and online newspapers in India and Türkiye have written about BME’s programs for international students in recent months. The articles published by national, regional, and business newspapers — some with readerships in the hundreds of thousands or millions — as well as educational and scientific portals, are an important tool in BME’s efforts to strengthen its international visibility, increase the number of international students, and attract as many students as possible especially from the massive market of India.

More than 10 percent of BME's 22,000 students are foreign nationals, with 2,600 studying in primarily English language courses.

The recruitment campaign launched by BME with EU funding — in collaboration with Mitte Communications — is aimed at students and their parents looking for an institution that offers a prestigious engineering degree. BME’s many strengths make it an attractive option, including its internationally recognized programmes covering a wide range of technical and economic fields, its location within the Schengen Zone, its favorable cost-benefit ratio, the country's good public safety, and, in case of Turkish students, the strong cultural ties.

One of the campaign’s main messages was that students at BME can acquire knowledge they can put to good use in their own countries. For example, the campaign highlighted the expertise of BME faculty in designing earthquake-resistant buildings and in post-earthquake reconstruction, as well as the fact that researchers validate soil moisture data for NASA and participate in the development of ESA satellites.

The message was supported by the media coverage, such as a report on CNN’s Turkish news site about BME faculty members’ achievements concerning earthquake-resistant buildings, in which Associate Professor Attila Joó was quoted. One Indian portal published an article on the possibilities of Indian-Hungarian space industry cooperation, potentially boosted by Tibor Kapu’s spaceflight last summer, where one of his companions was Indian astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla.

Two university staff members recently promoted BME in person to young people in Mumbai, Pune, and New Delhi during a tour of India. Balázs Bokor, associate professor at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, and Bálint Molnár, director of communications, visited several high schools and universities, and found students interested in the programmes — especially after hearing that the inventor of the Rubik’s Cube had also studied here.

Applications for the upcoming academic year have just opened for international students, and hopefully many of the students enrolling this fall will be the newly recruited ones from India and Türkiye.

Rector’s Office, Communications Directorate