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The predecessor of the University of Miskolc is the Mining and Metallurgy School (Bergschule), founded in 1735 in Selmecbánya, which was the first school in the world to offer higher education in mining and metallurgy. The Selmec School, which later became an academy, was a flagship for the establishment of technical colleges in Europe. Similar training was only provided decades later in Freiberg from 1765, in Berlin from 1770 and in St Petersburg from 1773. In 1794, the Polytechnic of Paris modelled its training on the Selmec laboratory course.
After the Treaty of Trianon in 1920, Selmecbánya became part of Czechoslovakia and the Academy was forced to relocate. Sopron became the home of the now stateless school.
During the socialist era, the National Assembly decreed in Act XXIII of 1949 that a Technical University of Heavy Industry should be established in Miskolc. This led to the creation of the higher education institution, which consisted of the Mining and Coal Engineering Faculty, relocated from Sopron, and the newly founded Mechanical Engineering Faculty.
The first academic day was 18 September 1949 in Miskolc. Teaching did not yet start within the present university buildings, as the site of the present universitas – an area of some 85 hectares – was not assigned until February 1950. Prisoners were also drafted in for the construction work, and among the political prisoners was the pianist György Cziffra, in whose honour a commemorative plaque was unveiled at the University of Miskolc in 2023.
The first student and faculty buildings were opened in the autumn of 1951. The institution was known as the Miskolc Heavy Engineering Technical University from 1949 to 1952, and then as the Mátyás Rákosi Heavy Engineering University until 1956, named after the Communist Party General Secretary of the time.
In October 1956, the young people of the University of Miskolc played a nationally significant role in shaking the foundations of the communist dictatorship with their courageous stand. On 22 October 1956, the Students’ Parliament of the University formulated an 11-point demand, which, together with the demands of the Diósgyőr Workers’ Council, was presented to the then Prime Minister Imre Nagy.
On 25 October 1956, thousands of people stood up for the demands and against the dictatorship in Miskolc at the demonstration that was initially organised in Búza Square and then continued in the University Town. On 4 November, after the Soviet army marched in, a fight broke out in the University Town, in which two first-year students lost their lives. Mechanical engineering student Gábor Kiss and mining engineer Gábor Kölbert were both shot dead. After the Revolution and the War of Independence, the institution reverted to the name of Heavy Engineering Technical University.
In addition to the high quality training offered by the technical faculties, which were adapted to the challenges of a changing world, several disciplines also appeared on the university’s curriculum in the second half of the 20th century.
The Faculty of Law was established in 1981 as the fourth law faculty in the country, followed by the training of economists in 1987 and the Faculty of Economics in 1990.
The ” forerunner institution ” of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of the University of Miskolc was the Association of Humanists, and its predecessor was the Institute of Humanities, which has been operating as an independent faculty since 1997.
A milestone in the field of health care was the launch of the training of health care workers at the Miskolc Branch of the Faculty of Health Sciences of the University of Debrecen in 1998, which became the basis for the establishment of the Faculty of Health Sciences of the University of Miskolc in 2009.
In the centre of Miskolc, in an impressive building, the Zenepalota, university-level music education is currently provided. Initially it was called the Miskolc branch of the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music and Music Teacher Training, with a centre in Budapest, and in 1997 it became the Béla Bartók Institute of Music of the University of Miskolc. Since 2021, the Béla Bartók Faculty of Music has been the eighth faculty of the University of Miskolc.
