Higher education in Central Europe has been scrutinised from many different perspectives during the last 30 years. In our analysis, we focus solely on Hungary and specifically on two key areas: governance and organisational structure. Using an analytical model proposed by Leisyte (2014), we analyse how the governance and organisational structure of institutions have changed between 1985 and 2015, and consider what the driving forces might be behind these changes. Through our analysis, we found that the pendulum effect observed in organisational culture and leadership in Eastern Europe (Bakacsi, 2014) in periods of transition could also be identified in the governance models in Hungary. Despite evidence of a convergence of higher education policies in Bulgaria, Romania, Poland and the Czech Republic (Dobbins, 2011) towards the market-type model of higher education governance, we found that in Hungary the model is much more state-controlled and there is already an apparent move away from foreign-inspired ideals and models. It is suggested that Hungary is ahead of the apparent trend in other countries where they have yet to experience a swing in the opposite direction.