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This paper reflects a fairly pessimistic view of Hungarian higher education (HE). The reason for this is not the quality of Hungarian HE or the prevailing processes in it, but the contrast between the present situation, achievements and trends, and the unique opportunities for development and the introduction of new paradigms offered by the restructuring of society, the prominent role of HE in the preparation of the integration processes as well as by outside assistance and international cooperation. Comparing the position of HE with other sectors of society or of the academic sphere (e.g. the research institutes of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences) HE can be seen to have a considerable comparative advantage: due to the relatively favourable government policy of the past years which has protected the sphere from devastating budget cuts, the universities and colleges are more or less intact and can operate without greater restrictions. Furthermore substantial developments have been carried out mainly on the basis of outside assistance and cooperation. The main problem lies in the fact that, unfortunately, these developments have not considerably altered the structure, the 'philosophy' of the system, the main frameworks, the activities at grassroots level and the way staff and students think. Comparing the main characteristics of Hungarian HE with those of Western European HE systems, a set of consistent differences can be listed. Consequently the restructuring of Hungarian HE would require a change of paradigms, i.e. introduction of a set of consistent and coherent measures, the transition from the present system of operation to another harmonising with the HE systems of Western European democracies. There seems to be no other possibility: experience of implementing excellent ideas has shown that changing only some parts of a consistent system is unsuccessful. This paper was prepared before the favourable changes at the Ministry of Education and Culture in the... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]