Masaryk University was established on 28 January 1919, only three months after the creation of the Czechoslovak Republic itself. It took its name from the country's founder and first President, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, who as a professor at Charles University in Prague had long called for the establishment of a second Czech-language university.
At its founding, Masaryk University comprised the Faculties of Law, Medicine, Arts and Science. The university thrived throughout the 1920s and 1930s, when Brno too was very much a dynamic centre of European Modernism in the arts and culture. Closed down by the Nazis in 1939, like all Czech higher education institutions, Masaryk University had barely begun to recover following the end of World War II when the Communist coup in 1948 plunged it into what would be a difficult period lasting for more than forty years. Hundreds of teachers and students were expelled, two entire faculties were closed down (Law and Education), and the very name of the university was changed: Masaryk was too powerful a symbol of liberal democracy and independent thought for his person to be associated with a “socialist” institution.
Throughout this period, however, the university strove to maintain its teaching and research standards, first under the very adverse conditions imposed in the period of the “building of socialism” and later, after the defeat of the Prague Spring reform movement in 1968, during the bleak years of “normalization”. Important scholarly works continued to be published, links were maintained as far as possible with universities in the West, the Faculties of Law and Education were reestablished.
The democratic revolution of 1989 allowed Masaryk University to reclaim its rightful name, and to embark with renewed energy on its course of providing leadership in higher education. The return of academic freedom and a recognition that education must remain relevant to the rapid social changes taking place made it possible for the university to establish the Faculties of Economics and Administration (1991) and Informatics (1994). The newest additions to the university are the Faculty of Social Studies, launched in 1998, and the Faculty of Sports Studies (2002).
Today Masaryk University comprises nine faculties with more then 200 departments, institutes and clinics. As a research-oriented institution, it covers a broad scope of disciplines, with particular strengths in the areas of medicine (cardiovascular diseases, neurology, oncology), biomolecular research (national centre), environmental chemistry and ecotoxicology, highly parallel and distributed computer systems, economic competitiveness, mechanisms for social cohesion, social history, medieval studies (Latin texts), linguistics (both Slavic and general linguists) and the history of Central Europe.
Over 40,000 students from the Czech Republic, the whole of Europe and the rest of the world - over 60 countries in all - study at the university. The use of the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS) helps foster the internationalization of curricula within a European context. The opening of three-year Bachelor's and two-year Master's degree programmes of study has helped to further widen access for those wishing to study at the university.
Currently Masaryk University is engaged in a 250 million euro development programme that involves the construction of a completely new campus and the refurbishment of all the university's present buildings. When the project is completed in 2010, it will have the most advanced facilities of any institution of higher education in the Central European region.
Contact information for students
| Incoming students |
Utrecht Network / Erasmus Mundus External Cooperation Window: Erasmus: |
| Outgoing students |
Erasmus: Other: See above |
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