George Soros’s latest multimillion dollar gift to the Central European University Business School underlines the gulf between the Budapest-based private institution and its rivals elsewhere in the region.
“They are unique in the region in having a serious endowment,” says the head of a competitor school. “Everybody else has to survive off tuition fees.”
Soros, the Hungarian-born billionaire investor founded the business school in 1988, a year before the fall of communism in the country. It does not want for resources – all students will receive an iPad this year, for example – but Mel Horwich, who was appointed dean at the beginning of this year, clearly has a mandate to shake things up.