Budapest Business School

Budapest Business School (BBS) (Budapesti Gazdasági Egyetem (BGE); officially: Budapest Business University (BBU) ) is a public business school specialising in business studies and social sciences in Budapest, Hungary. It was founded in 1857 by the merchants and bankers of Austria-Hungary. It is the oldest public business school in the world, and the second oldest among all business schools, after the ESCP.

The BBS is Hungary's market-leading and largest business school. It conducts education and research in leadership, economics, operations management, marketing, entrepreneurship, organizational behaviour, and other areas. The school offers 12 Bachelor's degree programs, usually in a choice of English, French, German, or Hungarian, and 12 Master's degree programs, of which the most popular ones are Master of Finance, Master of Management (equivalent to an MBA), Master of International Business, and Master of Tourism Management. Moreover, it offers a PhD in Management and other post-graduate professional qualifications.

History and traditions
BBS was founded in 1857 as the Pest Academy of Commerce, which is the official predecessor of the BBS faculties of the College of Finance and Accountancy and the College of Catering, Commerce and Tourism.

It was the first business school in Austria-Hungary and Central Europe. Further, it is the second oldest existing business school in the world, following the ESCP Europe. After the cities of Buda and Pest merged, the institution was renamed the Budapest Academy of Commerce.

Győző Czigler designed the Alkomány Street campus of the Budapest Academy of Commerce in 1882, and the construction was finished in 1885, when the construction of the Hungarian Parliament Building had begun directly next to it. The campus at Alkotmány Street is still one of the main campuses of the Budapest Business School. BBS's campus at Markó Street is also located in downtown Budapest. It is housed in a building designed by Ferenc Kolbenheyer in neoclassical style in 1872. The Markó Street campus of the BBS is a close but more modest kin of the top-ranked ETH Zurich, designed by Gottfried Semper and Gustav Zeuner. There is a room at the Markó Street campus named the Lotz Room, full of paintings painted by Károly Lotz and Mór Than. Many of the conferences of the Hungarian Presidency of the Council of the European Union were held in this room and in other lecture rooms on the Markó Street campus. Budapest Academy of Commerce was a private business school up until 1949 when the government nationalised it and made it a public business school.

After being renamed several times, the College of Accountancy was established in 1953, and the College of Catering and Commerce was established in 1969. In January 2000, the colleges created the BBS and became faculties of the university.

Campus and estate
BBS, for undergraduates, is split into the Faculty of Finance and Accounting (FFA), the Faculty of International Management and Business (FIMB), and the Faculty of Commerce, Hospitality, and Tourism (FCHT).

Its campus is in Budapest, in district XIV., Buzogány Street 10-12. College: Bagolyvár Street College (1148 Budapest, Bagolyvár st. 6-10.).

The FIMB started as the Foreign Trade Vocational School and was established in 1957 for young graduates, where young people were able to correspond in two foreign languages. In 1962, the school was transformed into an independent Higher Foreign Trade Vocational School. The foreign trade and commodity trade program was started in 1964. The institution was transformed into a college in 1971 under the name of the College of Foreign Trade. Specialist in-service training began in 1986; teaching Arabic and Japanese began. Its campus is in Budapest, in district XVI., Diósy Lajos Street 22-24. College: Mátyásföld College (1165 Budapest, Diósy Lajos st. 22-24.).

The origin of FCHT can be traced back to the establishment of the Pest Academy of Commerce in 1857, and thus its history was intertwined with the Faculty of Finance and Accounting until 1945. Its campus is in Budapest, in district V., Alkotmány Street 9-11. College: Gyula Lengyel College (1113 Budapest, Laufenauer st. 1-7.).

Academic profile
Current educational, academic, and research departments are the following:


 * Institute of Foreign Languages and Communication
 * Institute of Commerce and Marketing
 * Institute of Economics
 * Institute of Quantitative Methods
 * Institute of Management and Business IT
 * Institute of International Business Economics
 * Institute of Finance and Accountancy
 * Institute of Social Sciences and Pedagogy
 * Institute of Tourism and Hospitality
 * Doctoral School of Entrepreneurship and Business

At the university, students can choose from a variety of undergraduate and postgraduate programs

Research
The faculties of BBS have published 3,401 publications from 2016 to 2019. In 2019, BBS faculty and researchers published 655 scientific publications, 34 of which were articles in internationally highly rated journals (rated D1, Q1–Q4). The vast majority of the university's publications during this period were scientific (93%), with about 5% of the publications being educational and 2% educational. Between 2015 and 2019, 55% of BBS's publications were in Hungarian and 45% in foreign languages. An important tool for scientific dissemination is BBS’s Prosperitas journal.

There are currently more than 60 research groups at BBS and in 2019, the Research Fund's application system funded seven research projects at the university as well. Reflecting on the strategic areas of BBS, established four centres of excellence at the university that focus on the four main areas of our applied research: Budapest LAB Entrepreneurship Centre, the Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Hospitality, the Future of Higher Education Research Centre, Centre of Excellence for Cybereconomy. The staff of FHERC won the 2019 Professional Award of the Subcommittee on Management and Organizational Sciences of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in the category of foreign journal articles.

In 2019, the proportion of PhD-qualified lecturers exceeded 55%. Many BBS lecturers and professors are members of the various scientific committees of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, certain committees of the Hungarian Rectors' Conference, and leading and opinion-forming representatives in international and domestic professional organizations. An important task for BBS is to disseminate professional knowledge and shape social attitudes.

Student life
BBA has student organizations, publishes several student journals, and offers opportunities to participate in other leisure and creative activities.

International partnerships
BBS has partnerships with various foreign higher education institutions, allowing students to complete foreign exchange studies.

Rankings and reputation
78 percent of the graduating students at BBS in 2019 found full-time employment at the time of graduation. In 2020, the Faculty of Finance and Accountancy finished first on the university faculty popularity list in Hungary, and the other two, the Faculty of Commerce, Hospitality and Tourism and the Faculty of International Management and Business, were also among the 10 most popular Hungarian university faculties.

According to the HVG Diploma 2019, BBS -FCHT ranks 2nd and BBS -FIMB 4th among the Hungarian faculties of economics in terms of student excellence, which includes the number of first-place applicants, the average number of students admitted, the proportion of those admitted to the language test, and the number of those placed in the study competition. In the category of universities, BBS won the Higher Education Quality Award together with the Corvinus University of Budapest in 2010.

By the Spanish National Research Council, BBS is ranked on Webometrics Research as the #1 business school in Hungary, #33 in Europe, and #66 in the world in 2020 among business schools.

The Institute for Economic and Enterprise Research shows in HVG Diploma Magazine, BBS is #1 in the areas of finance, accounting, economic analyses, human resource management, and tourism management among all the universities in Hungary, and is also ranked in the top 3 in any other business and economic study area.

BBS provides the most valuable degrees and the best quality education in business management, HR management, commerce and marketing, international business, finance, and accounting among all the universities in Hungary by Népszabadság Top 25 Degrees research in 2007.

By Felvi.hu Rankings (National Higher Education Information Center), with 14,986 applicants in 2011, BBS is by far the most popular business school in Hungary and the most popular university in Budapest after the Eötvös Loránd University. The same institution ranks BBS #1 in quality and difficulty of business education economics among all the Hungarian business schools and ranks BBS as #2 in value of its degrees in business.

Heti Válasz Rankings and CEMI (Central European Management Intelligence) research in 2011, conducted with business managers and HR companies, ranks BBS #1 among all universities in Hungary.