During the traditional Welcome Dinner, foreign students arriving for the spring semester were given a taste of Hungarian folklore by folk dancers and the Szeredás folk music ensemble, and they closed the event with a joint dance.There are 7300 foreign students from 134 countries around the world who study at the UD. The UD welcomes students from abroad again in the spring semester, this time with 93 new students from 21 countries. Most of them come from Romania, but there are also many from Spain, Turkey and Italy.
Thanks to the Erasmus’s International Credit Mobility and the ISEP, in addition to the traditional Erasmus Programme Countries, this semester the UD also has students from Jordan, Kazakhstan, South Korea, the USA, the UK and South Africa. Most foreign students study at the Faculty of Medicine, Faculty of Economics and the Faculty of Humanities, but all faculties are accepting students this semester.
The Welcome Dinner was hosted by the International Office of University of Debrecen and the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Student Government. The foreign students also had the opportunity to get to know Hungarian culture and Hungarian cuisine. The opening night ended with a dance party outside the Assembly Hall.
Orsolya Jánosy, head of the International Office of the University of Debrecen, pointed out that the University of Debrecen has the largest number of foreign students among the Hungarian universities, and thanks to the English-language courses of the UD, there is also a wide range of educational opportunities for the newly arrived Erasmus scholarship holders.
‘Currently, 220 foreign students are studying in short-term Erasmus programmes at the University of Debrecen in the 2023/24 academic year, but we expect to organize more Erasmus Blended Intensive Programmes at the faculties in the spring, and students will also come to the Clinical Centre for summer internships, so the number of incoming students is expected to reach 300,’ said Orsolya Jánosy.
From the next academic year the students of the UD can study in any country in the world through the Pannonia Scholarship Programme. In addition to the Erasmus Programme Countries, the university can also send students to Japan, South Korea, China, Malaysia and the UK. Apart from the conventional forms of mobility, students can also receive support for short study trips, summer schools, participation in international conferences and research programmes abroad. The application for short-term student studies for the 2024/25 academic year will start in early March.