From the 2026 budget audit
Who decides which research in Kőszeg is worth your taxes?
A ministry budget funds one interdisciplinary research institute. No calculation exists for which research questions are worth the compulsory transfer from every other taxpayer.
Roughly 150 Ft per taxpayer per year — 613 millió Ft total, of which 471 millió Ft is payroll protected through a two-year severance window.
What you see — and what you don't
The seen: the institute's researchers and their interdisciplinary work in Kőszeg. The unseen: the scholars whose proposals did not receive funding because this ministry transfer pre-allocated the budget to one institution, and the competitive funding channels that never had to justify the allocation.
Objection
"Academic research needs stable, long-term funding — competitive grants create short-term pressure that destroys serious inquiry."
Answer
Stable funding is valuable; the question is who provides it. Universities, endowments, and competitive peer-review funds are the channels in which the allocation decision sits with those who hold the relevant judgement. A ministry appropriation to one institute concentrates the decision with those who do not. The institute's scholars carry their work into those channels; what ends is the ministerial appropriation, not the scholarship.
Share if you think research priorities should be decided by scholars and funders, not ministry budgets.
The analyst's verdict
Institute of Advanced Studies
Rationale
The Felsőbbfokú Tanulmányok Intézete is an interdisciplinary research institute, based in Kőszeg, conducting research at the intersection of the social and natural sciences and on regional development.[^3] Interdisciplinary academic research is valuable; the question the framework asks is not whether it is valuable but whether it must be financed by compulsory taxation from a ministry budget. Research-priority setting is a problem of dispersed, local knowledge: which questions are worth pursuing, which methods, which collaborations, is information held by scholars, funders, and the scholarly community, not by a central directorate. A state ministry appropriating 613.2 millió Ft to one institute is making a subjective allocation among research priorities that it has no calculation method to optimise. Academic research institutes in a classical-liberal settlement are properly financed by universities, by competitive and peer-reviewed research funding, by endowment, and by foundations — channels in which the allocation decision sits with those who hold the relevant judgement. The line concentrates a modest benefit on one institution while spreading the cost across every taxpayer; on the merits it is a candidate for Immediate Cut. It is classified as a short Phase-Out for one reason only: the protected party is the institute's research and administrative staff, who hold employment contracts entered in good faith. The 413.8 millió Ft personnel line and the 56.9 millió Ft of associated employer contributions together — 470.7 millió Ft — are the payroll component.
Transition mechanism
Severance-with-overlap over 24 months. The institute's staff are researchers and administrators with general, transferable skills; the realistic re-employment path is into universities, the competitive research-funding sector, or private-sector research roles. Under severance-with-overlap each employee keeps full salary for 24 months and may take new employment during that period while keeping both incomes — a mechanism documented in the classical-liberal transition literature for closing small state-financed bodies whose staff have transferable skills.[^4] The payroll component of 470.7 millió Ft is protected and paid out across years 1 and 2; the non-payroll material costs of 142.5 millió Ft are cut in the first budget cycle, because supplier and facility contracts are honoured through contract run-off, not through a continuing budget line. In years 1 and 2 the net saving is the non-payroll component (142.5 millió Ft) while severance is still paid; from year 3 the full 613.2 millió Ft is saved. The institute itself is not abolished as a body of scholarship — it is invited to continue under university, foundation, or competitive-funding sponsorship; what ends is the direct ministry appropriation.
Affected groups
The institute's staff — on the order of 50-80 research and support employees at Hungarian academic salary levels, though the precise headcount should be confirmed against the institute's published staffing return before the schedule is finalised. Each receives 24 months of full salary with the right to a second income immediately. The Kőszeg local economy loses a small employer; the research community loses a state-funded venue but not the scholars, who carry their work into other institutions.
Sources
- About iASK · Institute of Advanced Studies Kőszeg (Felsőbbfokú Tanulmányok Intézete) (2025)
Free Society Institute
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