Some 3,500 university and college students joined a torchlight demonstration on Wednesday night, protesting government plans to introduce tuition fees for all but the best students, and demanding the resignation of Education Minister Istvan Hiller, MTI News Agency reported.
Norbert Miskolczi, chair of the National Conference of Student Authorities, said students had been proposing alternatives to the Education Ministry for over a year, but had not been accepted. Therefore, they were demanding the minister's resignation.
Miskolczi called tuition fees a tax on students, saying that it penalized all students.
Organizers noted that similar albeit smaller protests had already been held in 12 other cities and towns.
Earlier in the day, the Education Ministry announced that it was ready to discuss alternative ways of assessing tuition fees, which students said was just foot-dragging.
Karoly Manherz, a senior official at the ministry, invited members of the Higher Education Roundtable to meet Thursday, to discuss a student proposal, which he added, could not be accepted because it was punitive.
The student proposals called for students who sign up for a subject but do not complete the course to pay for it.
Source: Xinhua
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