Professor Shalini Randeria, President and Rector, Central European University

Could you give us an overview of Central European University as it stands today? 

Established in 1991, and now based in Vienna, Austria, Central European University (CEU) brings together 1,400 graduate and undergraduate students from over 100 countries and 180 full-time faculty into a close-knit, cosmopolitan community engaged in research-based teaching and learning as well as collaboration across disciplines.

CEU combines the best of American and European academic traditions with all instruction and administration done in English. 

All CEU degree programs are accredited in the United States and Austria. There are programs in the humanities and social sciences as well as in cognitive science and data and network science. A deeply interdisciplinary approach permeates all aspects of learning and research.

What are the university’s keys to success? 

CEU’s mission is based on the ideal of an open society: a society that prioritizes free inquiry, democracy, social justice and equity. The university offers affordable graduate and undergraduate education to students, most of whom receive some financial support. 

CEU’s research is world-class — the university has regular success in winning competitive European research grants worth millions of Euros. 

Small class sizes (between 12 and 20 students) allow for intensive mentoring by professors, who sometimes involve students in their own research projects. More locally, the university contributes to and participates in the academic as well as the cultural life of Vienna, Austria, and Budapest, Hungary, where it has a small campus.

What are your key programs and offerings?

CEU offers PhD, one and two-year master’s and undergraduate programs. When it was originally founded in Budapest, CEU offered only graduate programs, but it  launched three interdisciplinary undergraduate programs after the move to Vienna from Budapest in 2020: 

1. BA in Culture, Politics and Society (CPS) 
2. BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) 
3. BA/BSc in Data Science and Society (DSS) 

According to the 2023 QS World University Rankings by Subject, two CEU programs rank among the top 50 worldwide, with a further four in the top 100. Its rankings in Politics and International Studies as well as Philosophy remained among the best 50, with Politics and International Studies at rank 26 and Philosophy at rank 34. Anthropology, History, Social Policy and Administration and Sociology also remain in the top 100 ranking category. In Austria, three of our programs were named number one, six were ranked at 2, and one was ranked at 3.

CEU faculty and students address some of today’s biggest intellectual challenges, including: bioethics and corporate responsibility, climate change and environmental security, media freedom and data privacy, gentrification and urbanization, minority- and gender-rights policies, terrorism and human security, the role of knowledge and truth in contemporary society, economic inequalities and labor market transformations, disinformation and social media, geopolitical challenges and rising authoritarianism.

What’s the role of innovation in Central European University’s business and operations? 

CEU has a unique funding model: its main supporter is the Open Society Foundations, but it has had remarkable success acquiring competitive research funding during its short history. For the 2023-2024 Academic Year, CEU attracted 148,692,839 euros in new external grants. 

CEU retains its campus in Budapest but does not offer degree programs there. Instead, it operates three unique institutions: an Institute for Advanced Study, an Institute for the Study of Democracy, and the Open Society Archive, an irreplaceable record of the history of Eastern Bloc countries and their resistance to tyranny.

CEU has a tradition of responding to humanitarian and social problems in the region: for example, it created the online Invisible University for Ukraine (IUFU) after the war started in 2022. For its innovative and responsive approach, the IUFU program was awarded the 2024 Brown Democracy medal, which honors the best work advancing democracy in the United States and internationally and has been awarded the second-place prize in the 2024 MacJannet Prize for Global Citizenship, which recognizes exceptional student community engagement initiatives.  

CEU also has a long history of giving free educational support to the underprivileged and oppressed Roma minority in Central and Eastern Europe.

What is the competitive landscape within the education sector and the Central European University’s strengths?

CEU’s highly diverse student body is its most important asset. The university’s faculty also comes from around the world and adds to the highly international community. Our 7:1 student-to-faculty ratio ensures a dynamic environment for collaboration and debate. And finally, although there are many English-language degree programs in continental Europe, there are very few research-driven universities that function entirely in the English language. This linguistic focus makes the CEU’s extraordinary international profile possible.