As a successor of the former Szent István University, the Hungarian University of Agriculture and Life Sciences (MATE) was founded on the 1st of February 2021 with the integration of Szent István University (Gödöllő), Kaposvár University, Georgikon Campus (Keszthely), Károly Róbert Campus (Gyöngyös), eleven research institutes and several business organisations. Subsequently it has become one of the largest agricultural-focused, multi-disciplinary tertiary institutions in Europe. Even though we have a new name in the last three years, our roots date back more than two centuries. We feel privileged that Georgikon Campus, one of the predecessors of MATE, was the first agricultural higher education institution in Europe, founded in 1797. With the foundation of MATE, our university has become part of the renewal of Hungarian higher education.
MATE’s long-term objective is to be amongst the thirty best agricultural higher education universities in the world while being the flagship of Hungarian agricultural education. As one of central Europe’s largest agricultural-oriented, multidisciplinary tertiary institutions, MATE’s mission is to provide world-class education that offers our alumni a promising career and makes them competitive in the job market.
Our professional operations focus on internationally outstanding domestic and cross-border tertiary level education, research and innovation activities, with a view in particular to the fields of science such as biotechnology and bioengineering, rural development, agricultural sciences, horticulture, viticulture and oenology, food science and food industry, food security, agricultural economics, water management, sustainability and renewable energy management, environmental and landscape management, and mechanical engineering. It is consistently ranked among the top Hungarian universities for both number of students involved in international mobility and quality of education.
MATE is one of the nine HEI testing partners of the Accelerate Future HEI team which is working on supporting and enhancing the capability of higher education to undergo transformational changes. We focus on transforming people, operations and processes internally and strengthening our external engagement, adopting global best practices to ensure the internal, long-term impact of institutional change.
