Ethnically based enrollment patterns at the University of Cluj/Kolozsvár, 1900–1944

Pálfy, Zoltán (2007) Ethnically based enrollment patterns at the University of Cluj/Kolozsvár, 1900–1944. Hungarian Studies, 21 (1-2). pp. 135-160. ISSN 0236-6568

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Abstract

This paper is an assessment of Hungarian and Romanian degree-holder contingents of the Cluj/Kolozsvár university in times of spectacular political change and relative social stagnation. This university has invariably been localized within a higher educational market mostly limited to the needs of the ethnically mixed population of Transylvania, needs that were seldom, if ever, reflected in equitable ethnic enrollment ratios. Local ethnic competition in and through the academe was always conditioned by external centers of political gravitation. The integrative role of the university altered each time the centre changed, and each time it was exerted not so much along socio-economic but along ethno-political lines. The late imperial educational commonwealth before World War I was largely dominated by the Magyar element. The subsequent nation-state framework reversed the situation to the advantage of Romanians in the inter-war period. This was followed by yet another turn-over between 1940 and 1944. All the while the university was less an agent of modernization than a fortress of survival in a continuous struggle for national dominance. Ethnic dominance tended to prevail over reform and social advancement, and repeated failures in the latter were ascribed to the presence of the rival ethnic other in the competition.

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