Founded in 1991 in Budapest with the explicit aim of helping the process of transition from dictatorship to democracy in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia, CEU casts now its web wider: it attracts students from the whole of the developing world, as well as from North America and Western Europe, Turkey and Southeast Asia.

CEU is today an international graduate university concentrating on the social sciences and the humanities. The university pursues a mission to achieve excellence in teaching, research and policy in order to become a change maker in the region and beyond, with a special focus on contemporary challenges of open society, and democratization.