In a former four-star hotel in Budapest’s leafy 11th district, Mathias Corvinus Collegium invites young people into a relative world of luxury.
Its headquarters a 20-minute walk up from the Danube River is replete with spa access and study pods overlooking a park with a duck pond. Students can browse seminars ranging from digital transformation to modernizm in architecture. They can hang out in a café named after conservative English philosopher Roger Scruton or sign up for study trips to the U.K. and Ireland.
The MCC, as it’s known locally, couldn’t be more divorced from the teacher shortages and battered infrastructure typical of Hungarian schools and colleges right now. That’s because MCC is no typical institution in a country where power is centered around one man and his world view.