Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE), the longest continuously serving university of Hungary, was founded in 1635 in the city of Nagyszombat (today Trnava, Slovakia) by Cardinal Péter Pázmány, Archbishop of Esztergom. It serves the interests of high quality education and research, building upon the best European traditions. The mission of ELTE is to preserve and enrich national and universal culture, to cultivate science and to pass on academic knowledge, as well as to shape and satisfy the real, long-term needs of Hungarian society and of mankind. ELTE aims to educate intellectuals with up-to-date knowledge and versatile culture, who
- can identify and analyze problems, and who are able to propose problem-solving strategies and bring about responsible decisions;
- seek consensus, understanding and respecting different cultures;
- are aware of their individual responsibilities with regard to the future of their immediate environment, of Hungary, of Europe and of mankind;
- represent the values of professionalism, solidarity and humanism; and
- respect universal ethical norms¸ human dignity and the freedom of thought and opinion.
In harmony with all the above and its four centuries of tradition, ELTE aims
- to offer, through the joint efforts of its members, valuable, up-to-date knowledge, modern thinking and competitive degrees to its students;
- to give high priority to programs at Master’s and PhD levels and above; and to widen the range of inter- and multidisciplinary programs and of courses offered in foreign languages, as well as programs conducted in partnership with top-ranking foreign universities,
- to pursue research, development and innovation activities that are globally acclaimed and capable of responding to complex social challenges, and which focus on social and technological issues still to be tackled, and thus to perform its role as a competitive research university in Europe;
- to foster the development of talented individuals and to increase the numbers of highly qualified and productive instructors and researchers by providing them with an attractive teaching and research environment;
- to maintain a value-based and efficient relationship with its immediate and broader context, thus acting as one of the leading university centers of the Central European region.
Motivated by the conviction that a high standard of teaching at a university is inconceivable without high-quality research, ELTE aims to represent both sides of the traditional concept of a universitas, and at a high level: the creative community of instructors and students (universitas magistrorum et discipulorum) and the ideal of an institution actively engaged in the pursuit of many scientific and scholarly disciplines (universitas scientiarum).
The leadership, instructors, researchers, students and all the other members of ELTE support the realization of these aims through mutual cooperation.