The Effectiveness of Adult Education

The Effectiveness of Adult Education vs. Postgraduate Psychology Training in Hungary and International Practice

Introduction – My Personal Motivation for Writing This Article

For quite some time now, a number of thoughts have been maturing within me, urging to be expressed. Without claiming to provide a comprehensive overview, I have attempted to put them into words in the following blog article.

Once upon a time, between my ages of nine and fifteen, my mother worked for an adult education company as a private entrepreneur, with remarkable efficiency and success in Borsod County during the 1990s. She was the head of the Borsod County branch of the Commercial and Tourism Continuing Education Ltd. I spent countless hours in her office, watching and listening to her work. I often joke that I did not learn andragogy from textbooks—I absorbed it with my mother's milk. Whether I wanted to or not, it was the environment I grew up in.

In the 1990s, immediately following the political transition and the closure of the Lenin Metallurgical Works, when nearly half the city became unemployed almost overnight, steelworkers and miners had to be retrained as chefs, waiters, precision electronics technicians, nail technicians—or anything else that would allow them to earn a living after the factories and mines shut down. Within a very short period after the political transition, half the city lost its jobs. People became unemployed, homeless, alcohol dependent, and fathers took their own lives in despair, sometimes following a cancer diagnosis (according to Leshan, profound grief, loss, and hopelessness often lie behind cancer, but I have written—and will write—about that separately). It was considered almost normal to see a man in his forties and his ten-year-old daughter eating discarded cake beside a rubbish bin. In that situation, effective adult education played an enormous role in enabling people to change professions.

During my mother's illness with cancer and after her death, I temporarily took over her position, which gave me first-hand experience of the transformation of Hungary's National Qualifications Register (OKJ) between 2004 and 2006. I was only twenty to twenty-three years old—still practically a child for such responsibility. In certain respects, I consider myself fortunate to have participated in that work (apart from the tragic reason that made it possible). I regret to see that, in some areas, virtually none of the values that characterised adult education at that time—and which were implemented not only in theory but also in practice within the OKJ system—remain today. Back then, if my mother, as regional adult educational training organizer director, had suggested that a retraining programme should take ten or fifteen years, I suspect she would have been metaphorically impaled—or drawn and quartered—without hesitation.

Ten years later, with a university degree in economics and as the mother of three children, I embarked on a career change. It has "only" been eleven years since then, yet now that I hold two university degrees, Hungarian psychologists call me a quack, and I can legally earn almost the same in my new profession as I did before becoming an economist—or perhaps even less. After all, when I was sixteen and completed my practical training as a retail assistant in Miskolc, I was actually paid. Now, when I complete professional placements as a psychologist, I practically pay for the privilege of working under the label of "volunteering" (or, as one acquaintance aptly put it, modern-day slavery), while also being expected to provide my own work equipment. Should I donate blood as well? I ask that cautiously, because I already know the answer: "Yes, of course—even that."

It was this experience that motivated me to write the present article. My apologies if it happens to offend certain interests, but what is taking place within postgraduate psychology training in Hungary is, in my opinion, simply beyond criticism and impossible to qualify in professional terms. I have been trying for some time to find more diplomatic, print-friendly words—but I have not succeeded.

I would like to begin with a few thoughts about training effectiveness—or, more precisely, what constitutes an effective educational programme. Not here in Hungary, of course—but out there, in the wider world, where such things actually exist.

Some people—far wiser than I, and who have formally studied this field—argue that an effective educational programme is characterized, among other things, by the following:

(If you are a psychologist or a psychology student, let me warn you in advance: I will not be formatting my citations according to the standards of the American Psychological Association. A complete reference list appears at the end of this article. From this point onward, my own reflections are presented in italics; the quoted material is not.)

What makes adult education effective?

The effectiveness of adult education extends far beyond simply completing a training programme or obtaining a certificate. Effective adult education enables individuals to acquire, update, and continuously develop competencies that are relevant to the labour market, professional practice, and personal development. Furthermore, it should strengthen learners' ability to adapt throughout their lives to technological, economic, and social change.

According to the contemporary educational paradigm, an effective adult education system is characterised by several interrelated principles.

Competency-based approach. Learning objectives are defined in terms of clearly specified competencies—knowledge, skills, and attitudes—that learners are expected to acquire and demonstrate by the end of the programme. Competency-based education prioritises measurable learning outcomes rather than the amount of time spent in instruction.

Modular structure. Educational programmes consist of interconnected but independent learning units (modules) that can be completed separately and built upon over time. A modular system increases flexibility, supports lifelong learning, and enables adults to reconcile their studies with work and family responsibilities.

Accessibility and inclusiveness. Effective adult education seeks to reduce barriers to participation by providing flexible learning pathways, recognising previously acquired knowledge and competencies, and making appropriate accommodations for learners with diverse educational backgrounds and life circumstances.

My own experience regarding psychology training: I already held a Master's degree in Economics when I enrolled in the Behaviour Analyst programme, which served as the prerequisite for entering the second-degree Psychology programme. In my experience, it was a complete waste of time. Every single week I had to sit another written test in mathematical statistics because I was not granted exemption. To this day, I can only hope that if a client ever comes to see me, they will forgive me for not assessing the normality of their "case" using a Kolmogorov–Smirnov test...

Transparency. Qualifications, learning outcomes, assessment criteria, and progression pathways should be clearly defined and easily understandable for learners, employers, and educational institutions alike. Transparency strengthens trust, facilitates the comparability of qualifications, and supports their portability.

The picture above illustrates the training system for psychologists and psychotherapists in Hungary. Logical, isn't it? When the public system requires you to study privately for years, only to then provide—free of charge or far below its actual value—the expertise you acquired at considerable personal expense to the very same public system that did not genuinely provide that expertise in the first place, but is perfectly capable of appropriating and exploiting it...

With an MSc in Economics specialising in Human Resources and Management, if you want to become an occupational psychologist in Hungary, the pathway is as follows: a three-year Bachelor's degree in Psychology (Behaviour Analyst), followed by a two-year Master's degree in Psychology (during which you study roughly half of the Bachelor's curriculum all over again, while the other half is, in my opinion, largely pointless and a waste of time), followed by a three-year postgraduate specialist training programme, etc. …

The costs? Ten years ago, the Bachelor's programme cost approximately HUF 360,000 per semester. Either you paid this yourself, or the state unnecessarily reimbursed the university on your behalf so that you could spend semesters listening to a liberal arts statistics professor explain that a variable is called a variable because it varies—and proudly recount that this revelation came to him during his PhD studies at ELTE (one of the most prestigious universities in Hungary). Really? How extraordinary. Congratulations on discovering the indentation in a spoon. And I wasn't granted exemption from attending these lectures, despite already having completed commercial secondary education and an economics degree... I realized what a the concept of a statistical variable was when I was sixteen; apparently, he needed an ELTE doctoral programme to arrive at the same conclusion. Spectacular... but never mind.

Labour market relevance. Educational content should be aligned with current and anticipated labour market needs through collaboration with employers, professional organisations, and other stakeholders. Programmes should prepare learners for actual workplace requirements and the continuously evolving demand for competencies.

(Eventually, I specialised in Clinical Psychology. It was not until my fifth year that I completed my first genuine professional placement, on a psychiatric ward. One of my defining experiences was participating in a Voice hearing group, where we engaged in conversations with the voices experienced by patients living with schizophrenia. During one of the breaks, a participant sat down beside me while I was about to eat a bread roll. He wanted to talk. He wanted to tell me that he was struggling because the voice in his head was telling him to kill the physician... Well... I nearly choked on my sandwich. One thing was absolutely certain: neither mathematical statistics, nor reading thousand-page theoretical textbooks, nor the 150 hours of mandatory group self-awareness training required for clinical work in Hungary—which, incidentally, is not even part of most university programmes, meaning many graduates enter such practical situations with virtually no self-awareness training at all—had prepared me for that moment. Anyway... everyone survived.

There was also the option of completing one's placement on an oncology ward. It was advertised with the slogan: "There you'll really get to show off in your white coat!" Well... yes. Armed with your mathematical statistics and theoretical psychology, at least you can enjoy being called Doctor...)

Recognition of prior learning and competencies. Adult learners possess substantial formal, non-formal, and informal learning experience. Effective systems recognize and validate previously acquired competencies, avoiding unnecessary repetition and, where appropriate, shortening learning pathways.

(Exactly! But I've already provided an example of that above.)

Flexibility. Adult learners require educational opportunities that adapt to their varying learning pace, schedules, and life circumstances. Flexible forms of education—including blended and online learning—increase both participation rates and successful programme completion.

(As far as I remember, individual study arrangements could only be requested for one month following childbirth—nothing else qualified. Fortunately, I never had that particular problem. I completed the programme while raising three children and later working full-time, alongside a full-time Master's programme. After all, we had learned time management during my economics studies. Unfortunately, there was no part-time psychology programme available in Budapest. The campus was located on the opposite side of the city: a one-and-a-half-hour journey each way for a ninety-minute practical class, involving four transfers during the metro reconstruction works in Budapest. And, as I have already mentioned, what they taught was certainly worth crossing the entire city—with four transfers—after work and three children waiting at home...

One of my favorite stories occurred during a statistics lecture. The professor announced that he would kindly ask us not to bother him with statistical analyses involving a population size of one because, only the previous week, he had been forced to explain to some poor psychology student that the ROPstat software (a basic, paid statistical package developed specifically for psychology students) simply could not analyze such data. Naturally, the developer of the software presumably enjoyed a healthy profit margin from it. Returning to the story: this profound, intellectually demanding discussion with the unfortunate psychology student—one of immense psychological significance—cost the professor at least ten precious minutes of his life, and he lamented how much he would miss those ten minutes at the end of his life. Really? Doesn't he think we miss the three to five years unnecessarily imposed on us by the training system?)

Quality assurance. Effective education is supported by system-level quality assurance mechanisms, including well-qualified instructors, evidence-based curriculum development, reliable and valid assessment methods, consideration of learner feedback, and the continuous evaluation and improvement of programmes.

Learner-centred approach. Adult education takes into account the specific characteristics of adult learners. It builds upon their previous experience, encourages active participation, supports self-directed learning, and places strong emphasis on the practical application of acquired knowledge.

(We had an enormous number of practical statistics classes and written tests... or have I mentioned that already? I believe I have.

And another story: I attended an institution that proudly advertised itself as student-centred and practice-oriented, claiming that every student would be addressed by name. Well, they called me Barnabás for three consecutive years (it's a male name in hungary, and I am visibly a female…). Eventually, I reverted to my maiden name to give them one more chance to fulfil at least a fraction of what they promised in their advertisements...)

Transfer of learning. Ultimately, the effectiveness of adult education is measured by the extent to which acquired competencies are applied in professional practice, contribute to improved job performance, enhance employability, and support long-term career development.

(On that note, let me add: if any of my economist friends ever have a question about mathematical statistics, they are welcome to ask any psychologist trained in Hungary—they will receive an answer in no time. As for psychological problems... well... I'd recommend the English-speaking world.)

Based on these principles, the defining characteristics of effective education are: transparency, a modular structure, flexibility, recognition of prior learning, and an outcome-oriented approach.

A Brief Look Back: The 2006 Reform of the National Qualifications Register (OKJ) – Competency and Modularity in Practice

A milestone in the history of Hungarian vocational education was the reform of the National Qualifications Register (OKJ) between 2004 and 2006, which directly responded to modern expectations regarding training effectiveness. In 2006, the structure of adult education and vocational training underwent a fundamental transformation and was reorganized around four key principles:

• Competency-based approach: Instead of emphasizing rote memorization of curriculum content, the focus shifted to output requirements—namely, learning outcomes—that is, what learners are actually capable of accomplishing in the workplace.
• Modular structure: Vocational qualifications were divided into independent yet interconnected modules. This made it possible to establish a flexible system of partial qualifications and advanced qualifications.
• Transferability: Thanks to the modular structure, common modules shared across different professions could be recognized, thereby avoiding unnecessary repetition.

(For example, if someone had already studied chain index calculations during a Retail Store Manager programme, they did not have to study or sit an examination on the same topic again when enrolling in a Restaurant Manager programme. Compare this with the liberal arts psychology programmes, where my Master's-level statistics examination completed within my Economics degree—widely considered one of the most difficult examinations of the five-year programme—was not recognised. Or the fact that my 300 hours of psychodrama-oriented self-awareness training were not accepted within my integrative body psychotherapy training, and vice versa. These are just one or two examples among many.)

• Transparency: Standardised assessment and examination criteria were introduced, making it clear to employers what knowledge and competencies actually stood behind a qualification.

Although the National Qualifications Register has since been replaced by the Register of Professions, the competency-based and modular logic introduced in 2006 continues to be regarded as one of the fundamental pillars of modern adult education.

What Makes Adult Education Effective? The Professional Foundations

The methodology of adult education differs fundamentally from that of compulsory schooling. According to the international andragogical literature, the key to effectiveness lies in practical orientation, predictability, and immediate applicability. The most influential models for measuring and designing training effectiveness are based on decades of research.

• Malcolm Knowles' theory of andragogy states that adult learners are internally motivated, self-directed, problem-centred, and seek knowledge that can be applied immediately in everyday practice.
• Donald Kirkpatrick's Four-Level Model argues that training effectiveness should not be evaluated solely on the basis of participant satisfaction (Level 1) or acquired knowledge (Level 2), but also according to behavioral change in the workplace (Level 3) and measurable organizational outcomes (Level 4).
• Jack Phillips' ROI Model further developed this framework by introducing a fifth level: Return on Investment (ROI). This quantifies the relationship between the financial and time investment required by a training programme and the financial return realized by the learner or the organization.

The true effectiveness of a postgraduate programme can ultimately be measured by whether, after investing years of study and substantial financial resources, the acquired knowledge provides a fair livelihood, a competitive market advantage, and a predictable career path.

When we embark on a second-degree programme as adults—often alongside family responsibilities and full-time employment—we naturally perform our own personal return-on-investment calculation. But what happens when this calculation concerns one of the most sought-after, yet simultaneously one of the most heavily regulated professions within the human services sector: psychology, health psychology, and psychotherapy?

(During five years of university training, the only career newsletters we received essentially suggested that, if we behaved ourselves, we might eventually be fortunate enough to secure a voluntary position in a public healthcare institution. Apparently, university lecturers buy their bread with "God will reward you," because I genuinely have no idea how they imagine people can make a living through unpaid work. Or perhaps they themselves are not working for free—but expect me to finance the income generated by their state-mandated, fee-paying method-specific training programmes from my own unpaid work? They preach water while drinking wine? Well... I think I understand why I fail to understand this.)

The Hungarian Reality: Efficiency Traps in Psychology and Psychotherapy Training

While modularity has become a statutory principle within vocational education, higher-level adult education (second-degree and postgraduate specialist programmes), and particularly the mental health training pathway, has remained astonishingly rigid, linear, and centralized.

1. Time and the Absence of Modularity – The "All or Nothing" Principle

The Hungarian system almost completely lacks flexible modularity and transferability.

Following the Master's degree, specialist training programmes (such as Clinical Psychology or Health Psychology) generally consist of closed, three- to four-year blocks. Psychotherapy training is then added on top of these, requiring another two to three years.

If someone is forced to interrupt the process for family or financial reasons, they receive no partial qualification or "micro-credential" that would enable them to work legally in the labour market for a salary reflecting a meaningful level of competence.

(From the perspective of an economist, telling someone who has completed a five-year university degree to work without pay represents a pitiful wage level, no matter how one looks at it. Of course, I was repeatedly made to feel—if not always explicitly—that economists are all fools and only psychologists are normal during my Bachelor's studies. Because apparently it is perfectly normal to work as a university lecturer for a net monthly salary of HUF 300,000–400,000. Everything is perfectly fine there. I am the one considered foolish for wanting to earn a decent living with two university degrees. Absurd.)

2. Financial ROI (Return on Investment) and the Asymmetry of Fair Compensation

The cost of these programmes is enormous.

Beyond university tuition fees, students must personally finance the mandatory self-experience training, method-specific professional training (often involving hundreds or even thousands of hours), and supervision.

Altogether, this represents an investment of several million Hungarian forints and many years of one's life—and even this would not necessarily be problematic if the reward at the end were not an income roughly equivalent to that earned by a well-trained entry-level cleaner elsewhere in Europe. Although the 2021 healthcare wage reform improved salaries within hospitals, earnings in the public sector still result in an extremely slow return on investment.

Private practice offers a substantially better ROI, yet newly qualified professionals encounter numerous administrative and legal barriers when attempting to establish an independent practice.

3. The State of Digitalization: Theory Online, Practice Stuck in the Past

Some university lectures and supervision sessions have moved into the digital environment, reducing travel time.

However, digital transformation has stalled at the level of "talking heads in front of a webcam."

There are no interactive AI-supported case simulations, modern digital knowledge bases remain largely absent, and training programmes pay little attention to the competencies required for telemedicine or online psychological counselling.

(And if you attempt to acquire abroad something that is not yet available within the Hungarian educational framework, a senior clinical psychologist—socialized within the Hungarian public healthcare system - or perhaps anti-socialized would be a more accurate term -, whose tendency toward opposition and negative intent has apparently been cultivated to a uniquely high professional level—will casually tell you to your face that you are a quack.)

When the System Contradicts Itself: Boundary Violations and Ethical Anomalies

One of the cornerstones of effective adult education, according to the principles of andragogy, is predictability. If the rules of the game are changed unilaterally and arbitrarily during the training process, professional trust is destroyed. Unfortunately, the Hungarian market for method-specific psychotherapy training continues to exhibit practices that are unworthy of the helping professions.

A common phenomenon is that trainers or professional associations modify the training requirements retrospectively, after participants have already progressed substantially through the programme. For example, students may enroll under a clearly defined set of conditions (e.g., 150–300 hours of closed-group self-awareness training), only to be informed near the end of the process that they must complete yet another group or that the required number of hours has been extended during the course of training.

This practice creates fertile ground for serious abuses:

• Power asymmetry. The trainer simultaneously occupies the roles of teacher, examiner, and psychological facilitator within the self-experience process. This dependency places students in a particularly vulnerable position. Because of the sunk cost fallacy, they are often willing to accept unfair conditions rather than lose the years and financial investment they have already devoted to the programme.
• Lack of consumer protection. Within professional associations, legal oversight is generally weak, while internal ethics committees are often biased in favour of their own trainers. As a result, students have virtually no effective legal remedy.
• "Preaching water while drinking wine." One of the fundamental principles of psychotherapy is the provision of a safe, stable therapeutic framework. If training institutions themselves manipulate those very boundaries according to their own financial or power interests, they undermine the credibility of the profession itself.

My own experience confirms this reality. After completing 300 hours of training and investing several years of committed effort in a Hungarian method-specific psychotherapy programme, I was confronted with arbitrary and unjustified retrospective changes to the training framework. At that point, I decided to withdraw—not only from the programme itself, but also from the country whose educational system maintained such practices.

This was not an act of giving up. Rather, it represented the establishment of a rational and ethical boundary. A training institution operating in this manner is, in my opinion, unworthy of bearing the title of a psychotherapy training programme.

Naturally, I subsequently continued my studies at a different training institute and am now working professionally with clients.

Career Change in Practice: Two International Case Studies

To illustrate just how unique and inflexible the Hungarian system is in comparison with international practice, let us examine two concrete career pathways across seven different countries.

CASE 1: Becoming an Occupational Psychologist with an MSc in Human Resources or Management

- Hungary

An MSc in Human Resources is not regarded as a relevant background qualification for psychology. Consequently, the entire educational pathway begins from scratch:

3-year Bachelor's degree in Psychology

2-year Master's degree in Psychology

2-year postgraduate specialist training

Total: approximately 7 years of study and HUF 3.5–5 million in costs.

Return on investment: poor.

- Austria

Similarly linear.

A Bachelor's and Master's degree in Psychology are required to obtain the protected professional title Psychologe, followed by specialist training in Work, Organisational and Business Psychology (AOW), 3000-5000 Euro the estimated cost of training).

Duration: approximately 5–6 years.

- United Kingdom

Maximum efficiency.

An HR professional completes a one-year intensive MSc in Psychology (Conversion) accredited by the British Psychological Society (BPS).

Afterwards, they may proceed directly into Occupational Psychology specialist training.

Duration: 2–3 years.

Estimated cost: £12,000–20,000.

The system recognises the applicant's previous business education.

- The Netherlands

Flexible.

If the applicant completed sufficient statistics during their HR MSc, they may enter a Work and Organisational Psychology MSc following an individual assessment and, if necessary, completion of supplementary pre-master modules.

Duration: 1–2 years.

Cost: approximately €2,500–4,000 per year.

- Denmark

Strict regarding the protected professional title.

A five-year university psychology programme remains mandatory.

However, within the Danish labour market, professionals holding an MSc in HR together with additional business coaching accreditations can often occupy virtually the same positions and earn comparable salaries. Consequently, obtaining the protected psychology title is not always economically necessary.

- Czech Republic and Poland

The Czech Republic has retained the traditional integrated five-year psychology education.

Poland, however—particularly through private universities such as SWPS University—offers highly flexible weekend and evening psychology conversion programmes lasting 2–3 years for applicants who already possess another university degree.

CASE 2: Becoming a Psychotherapist with an Engineering MSc

- Hungary

Only medical doctors, dentists, and clinical or developmental specialist psychologists are eligible to enter psychotherapy training.

For an engineer, the educational pathway consists of:

Bachelor's degree in Psychology (3 years)

Master's degree in Psychology (2–3 years)

Clinical Psychology specialist training (4 years)

Psychotherapy specialist training (2 years)

Total duration: approximately 11 years.

Estimated cost: HUF 6–8 million.

The system effectively closes the profession to career changers.

- Austria

A paradise for career changers.

Psychotherapy constitutes an independent profession.

Training consists of:

Propädeutikum (foundation programme, 1–3 years)

Fachspezifikum (method-specific programme, 3–6 years)

Although the Psychotherapiegesetz 2024 raises psychotherapy education to university level, engineers remain eligible through supplementary modules.

Duration: approximately 5–7 years alongside employment.

Estimated cost: €20,000–40,000.

- United Kingdom

Completely open.

The principal professional organisations (UKCP and BACP) do not require a psychology degree.

An engineer may complete:

a one-year foundation programme;

followed by a 3–4-year UKCP-accredited clinical diploma or MSc.

Total duration: 4–5 years while working.

Estimated cost: £15,000–25,000.

- Denmark

A liberal market.

The professional title is not legally protected.

Professional credibility is established by completing a four-year private psychotherapy programme accredited by the Danish Psychotherapist Association.

Admission requires only an engineering MSc and sufficient personal maturity.

Duration: 4 years.

Estimated cost: approximately HUF 2.5–5 million.

- The Netherlands

A clear distinction exists.

Entry into the clinical healthcare system is effectively impossible for engineers.

However, non-healthcare (complementary) professional organisations (such as NVPA) admit engineers who complete an accredited 3–4-year private psychotherapy programme, enabling them to practise legally within the private sector.

- Czech Republic and Poland

In the Czech Republic, the clinical pathway likewise remains closed to engineers.

In Poland, however, independent psychotherapy institutes—including four-year postgraduate programmes accredited by the Polish Psychiatric Association—accept engineers who successfully complete an entrance interview and demonstrate appropriate personal suitability.

(Thus, there are countries where, within three-four years, you can complete a psychotherapy or counselling programme and immediately begin practicing privately for a professional hourly fee that genuinely allows you to change careers—even if your original profession was engineering. This is admittedly an extreme but entirely real example; I personally know a former engineer who now leads self-awareness groups among other activities. In Hungary, by contrast, it takes approximately eight years merely to retrain from Human Resources to Occupational Psychology, while state university programmes generally do not even include the self-awareness training that is nevertheless expected later on—and so on, and so forth. I would rather not repeat myself.)

Economic ROI: Public and Private Sector Income as a Psychotherapist

The income patterns of psychotherapists across the seven countries examined clearly illustrate the impact of market demand and regulatory frameworks on financial return.

Psychotherapists' income levels and return-on-investment indicators vary considerably across European countries depending on regulatory environments, healthcare financing models, and market demand.

Within private practice, the therapist's actual take-home income is substantially influenced by taxation, administrative costs, office rental, supervision fees, and other professional expenses, which typically consume 25–40% of gross revenue.

The following table summarizes approximate gross figures (EUR) and professional averages.

(So, I think it has now become abundantly clear that it is definitely worthwhile spending a few extra years on training in order to enjoy the professional and financial rewards of working as a psychotherapist in Hungary... Or perhaps not?)

International Accreditation Absurdities and the Wall of Protectionism

Perhaps the most painful weakness of the Hungarian training system is its international isolation and rigid bureaucratic resistance. While the European Union promotes the mutual recognition of qualifications, the reality within the field of mental healthcare is characterised by strong national protectionism and outdated professional and economic interests.

Isolation in Both Directions

This accreditation anomaly severely restricts both professional mobility and educational efficiency.

Outward

Even a Psychology Master's degree obtained in Hungary in accordance with the Bologna Process can be extremely difficult—or in many cases virtually impossible—to have recognised directly in several Western European countries due to bureaucratic obstacles.

Inward

Even more absurd is what happens within Hungary.

For example, when I attended my psychotherapy training, the internationally recognised integrative body psychotherapy programme accredited by the European Association for Body Psychotherapy (EABP) was not recognised by the Hungarian authorities as an official specialist qualification in its own right.

Similarly, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)—a third-wave cognitive behavioural therapy that has been available throughout parts of Western Europe since the 1980s—is still not recognised as an accredited psychotherapy training programme in Hungary, along with numerous other internationally established methods.

In many European countries, knowledge acquired through such European-level programmes is entirely sufficient to establish an independent psychotherapy practice.

In Hungary, however, legislation largely ignores these qualifications.

The same rigidity can be observed in the domestic accreditation of the internationally respected Rogerian Person-Centred (PCE) approach.

Elsewhere, professionals who complete person-centred training may immediately begin practising as counsellors—or later as psychotherapists—without first spending four years working in the Hungarian public healthcare system before being permitted to apply expertise that they largely acquired outside that very system.

In Hungary, by contrast, becoming a person-centred therapist effectively requires:

• completing a five-year Psychology degree;
• working for four additional years in the far-from-person-centred Hungarian public healthcare system;
• and fulfilling several further requirements that many would regard as equally difficult to justify.

The Cost of Methodological Rigidity: The Hungarian system obliges professionals to spend at least four years within the public healthcare system under the framework of clinical specialist training—often under inadequate salaries and poor infrastructural conditions.

Only after passing yet another state specialist examination may they officially use the title psychotherapist in relation to expertise largely acquired through privately financed training programmes.

Even then, they are typically able to earn only a fraction of what they could earn by practising elsewhere in Europe using the same professional knowledge.

Two Neighbouring Countries: Austria and Hungary - There is a striking difference between Austria and Hungary regarding the number of officially recognised psychotherapy methods.

Whereas Austrian legislation adopts a highly pluralistic approach by recognising a wide range of therapeutic schools, Hungary maintains a much more centralised medical-clinical model.

Consequently, many approaches are not recognised as independent psychotherapy methods but can only be studied as components of broader umbrella approaches (for example, Integrative Psychotherapy).

Methodological Diversity by Country - comparison table:

Why Did Such a Huge Difference Emerge?

1. The Nature of the Legal Framework (Vienna vs. Budapest):

• Austria: The Austrian Psychotherapy Act of 1990 (Psychotherapiegesetz) established psychotherapy as an autonomous, independent scientific profession rather than a subfield of medicine or psychology. Consequently, any therapeutic modality that demonstrated sufficient scientific validity could obtain independent accreditation.
• Hungary: In Hungary, psychotherapy is a postgraduate healthcare specialization built upon either an MA degree in psychology or a medical degree. Only those who are already qualified as clinical psychologists or medical specialists (psychiatrists) may become psychotherapists in the clinical sense. As a result, the recognition of therapeutic methods is subject to a much narrower, more conservative, and more academically restrictive filtering process.

2. Funding:

In countries where a broad range of therapeutic methods is available (such as Austria and the United Kingdom), private health insurance providers or partial public reimbursement systems (such as Austria's Wahlarzt system) enable clients to access therapists practicing specialized or individualized methods while having part of the treatment costs reimbursed.

Why Do We Reject Best Practices?

The irony—and the tragedy—of the situation becomes apparent here. If the Hungarian education and healthcare system were a global leader in mental health prevention, such strict regulation might be understandable. However, the statistics present a stubborn reality: for decades, Hungary has ranked among the worst-performing countries in Europe regarding suicide, depression, and alcoholism.

It is evident that Hungarian professional policymaking does not possess the world's most effective model for educating mental health professionals or maintaining an efficient mental healthcare system. The rejection of international best practices, international accreditation systems, and more flexible educational pathways is driven not by professional quality considerations but by deeply entrenched institutional and financial interests. These interests ultimately push the actual needs of both trainees and patients/clients out of focus. The purpose of strict gatekeeping is to artificially restrict the market and preserve the status quo—at the expense of students' time, financial resources, and, ultimately, the mental health of the population.

Summary Table: Health and Demographic Indicators:

(Methodological Notes for Interpreting the Data:

• Life expectancy: According to the latest Eurostat data, there is a marked gap of nearly six years between Eastern European countries (Hungary, Poland) and Western European countries (the Netherlands, Austria, Denmark).
• Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD): This indicator refers not merely to alcohol consumption measured in liters but to the prevalence of clinically defined alcohol abuse and dependence within the population aged 15 years and older. Hungary performs particularly poorly on this indicator.
• Suicide and cancer mortality rates: Both columns present OECD standardized rates per 100,000 inhabitants. Hungary has one of the highest cancer mortality rates in the European Union.)

Key Relationships from the Perspective of the Psychotherapy Market

• The relationship between mental health and alcohol consumption: In countries with high per-capita alcohol consumption and elevated suicide rates (e.g., Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Poland), there is structurally a much greater need for psychotherapeutic services. Nevertheless, the market ROI in these regions remains below Western European levels due to lower purchasing power and shortcomings in public healthcare funding.
• Health awareness and screening programs: In Scandinavian and Western European countries (Denmark, the Netherlands, Austria), higher cancer statistics often reflect exceptionally comprehensive and accurate population-wide screening programs, resulting in earlier diagnoses and improved survival rates. The same preventive approach is evident in their mental healthcare systems, where psychotherapy is widely supported through public health insurance or private insurers.

Conclusion: Where Should Hungarian Adult Education Go from Here?

The principles introduced by the 2006 reform of the National Qualifications Register (OKJ)—namely competency-based education and modularity—remain valid to this day. However, their implementation at the level of postgraduate higher education has remained incomplete. If future professionals are to experience education not as a financially and psychologically draining survival exercise burdened by ethical concerns and accreditation abuses, but rather as a genuinely effective, transparent, and worthwhile investment, radical changes are required.

We must adopt Western European models: introduce a micro-credential system, ensure effective consumer protection oversight of educational institutions, become more open to accreditation by international umbrella organizations, and elevate digitalization into a genuinely interactive, 21st-century methodological tool.

Truly effective adult education does not merely provide a certificate—it provides measurable, reliable, and fair competitive advantages in the labour market.

Well, I have no intention of writing a doctoral dissertation on andragogy. I have never been a particularly theory-oriented professional. Anyone who is genuinely interested in the principles of effective adult education can easily explore the topic further.

For those doctoral students in statistics with a humanities background (oh dear—even that phrase is a contradiction in itself: "humanities" and "statistician" feel like mutually exclusive concepts, especially when the goal is to educate healthcare professionals...), I would like to clarify something for those wondering whether my statistical hypothesis is sound: THIS IS NOT A STATISTICAL HYPOTHESIS! (There is a story behind that statement as well—but it falls outside the scope of this article. Perhaps I'll write about it tomorrow too, now that I've recently rediscovered the joy of writing—rather like a puppy discovering how to bark.)

I have personally experienced the dysfunctionality of the Hungarian postgraduate education system. My intention is to draw attention to these anomalies—not out of resentment, but because I genuinely care, and because hope is always the last thing to die. Yes, yes, I know: according to some, all of this is merely my own perceptual bias. And if I choose to trust what I have seen and experienced with my own eyes rather than what those who have a financial interest in maintaining the current educational system claim, then supposedly the fault must lie with me.

And here are one or two more memorable gems from my experiences.:

The head of the Department of Personality Psychology, during an official information session about the clinical psychology and psychotherapy training system, told the students that "if you want to finance clinical training, it's worth finding yourself a wealthy husband." (In other words, a man willing to pay so that he hardly ever gets to see his partner?... And what about the male students?... Should they also find themselves wealthy husbands? Well... that would create a different kind of conflict with the hungarian system's expectations—but never mind, that's another topic entirely.) I'd like to say it's funny, but it isn't.

When one of the candidates came out of the final examination for the Behaviour Analyst programme, they said that after drawing their examination topic, they looked at the Chair of the Ethics Committee of the Hungarian Family Therapy Association and asked, "Do I really have to answer this?" The response was "No." But not because the candidate had mastered the topic. Rather, because they had already paid the Association and had begun their mandatory self-experience training, which at the time cost approximately HUF 700,000. There was no statistically significant association whatsoever between participation in family therapy self-experience sessions and the topics covered by the Bachelor's final examination. But apparently that did not matter: the candidate was not required to answer the examination question and nevertheless received the highest possible grade without demonstrating any knowledge. So perhaps economists really are right after all: money talks... At that time, I was not yet in a position to start "greasing the wheels" anywhere, and I paid the price for it during my own final examination. A four-member, all-male examination committee attempted to fail me on the topic of infancy—even though I was already the mother of three children—because I did not know what the relationship was between the theorists Abraham Maslow and Harry Harlow. Of course, they must have known far better than I did how to tandem breastfeed (or perhaps how to make someone's life miserable)—but that is a story deserving of its own essay. Well, whatever: there are those who are equal, and those who are more equal, right? All I'll say is this: I couldn't start paying into this system back then, and by the time I had money again, I didn't want to. I chose a different path. Because there's always another way!

" Bye, lizards! I'm outta here!"

That is a verbatim quotation from a university lecturer who told us that he had participated several method-specific psychotherapy training programmes and had worked in health clinical practice, but after two of his colleagues died by suicide before the age of thirty-five, he decided to leave the field: 'Bye, lizards! I'm outta here!'... Since then, he has been teaching psychology students instead.

(Incidentally, we listened to this entire story during an MA course instead of covering the officially prescribed curriculum.)

Further Reading for Enthusiastic Readers:

References

1. Knowles, M. S., Holton, E. F., & Swanson, R. A. (2020). The Adult Learner: The Definitive Classic in Adult Education and Human Resource Development. Routledge.
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3. Phillips, J. J., & Phillips, P. P. (2016). The ROI Methodology in Action: A Process Overview. ROI Institute.
4. Farkas, É. (2010). The Effectiveness of Adult Education. In New Research in Educational Sciences. ELTE Eötvös Publishing.
5. Zachár, L. (2021). The Sustainability and Effectiveness of the Hungarian Vocational Education System. New Pedagogical Review (Új Pedagógiai Szemle), 71(5–6).
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"If your first career choice wasn't the right one, have the courage to move on. It's not about finishing what you started, but about being brave enough to change." Tamás Vekerdy, outstanding Hungarian child psychologist and the person who introduced Waldorf education to Hungary.