“Students on government scholarships now have to sign a contract in which they promise that they will work in Hungary for twice the length of their course”

The government-funded programmes now have a restriction: students on government scholarships have to sign a contract in which they promise they will work in Hungary for twice the length of their course within 20 years. That’s a restriction that not many young Hungarians like because they want to see the world and a lot of them want to work abroad at some point.

The PIE: Is that a market you see growing a lot?

HL: Currently the US is getting 700 students from Hungary, so even if there’s 100% growth that’s only 1,400 students from the whole country. So it’s not really worthwhile just to target that one market, but to do it along with other markets in Europe is a good idea.

The PIE: What are the biggest challenges that you’ve faced so far as an agent?

HL: Well, there are different perspectives. Growing a company is an incredibly difficult task, of course. It’s very important to make it a stable company where you don’t have to be there at all and it still works. I took that step around three years ago but a lot of small companies have difficulty taking that step to become independent of their founder.

“It’s been incredibly difficult in the first few years to find appropriate partners in the US”

Looking into the US as a market, it’s been incredibly difficult in the first few years to find appropriate partners. A lot of institutions started to open up for recruitment because of financial reasons, but they were comparing a semester programme to an eight-semester programme, where they receive eight times as much in tuition. It was very difficult to talk to universities who would see that this is a market.

The PIE: You’re a founding member of AIRC and were among the first agents to be accredited. What made you want to get involved?

HL: It’s about development. That’s probably something I’ll never stop doing: developing myself, developing the company, always trying to take yet another step towards improving quality. And I think this is exactly what AIRC’s doing, because you cannot be good at something if you keep it under the table. You can only improve things if a lot of people look at it, discuss it, and form a common understanding of where you want it to be.

The PIE: Do you think the impression of agents among US providers is changing for the better?

HL: Yeah, that’s somewhere where AIRC did a great job; almost every institution I speak to has heard of AIRC. The biggest hurdle, or the organisation that spoke against agents the most, was NACAC. And now that problem’s been eliminated, I think nobody’s going to stop the development of quality work between universities and agents.