Negotiating Multilingualism: Institutional and Student Perspectives on the Linguistic Landscape of Three Transylvanian Universities

Higher education should serve as a transmitter of knowledge and values while promoting cultural pluralism that goes beyond the normative values and cultural standard of the majority culture. The research of the linguistic landscape of educationscapes (Krompák et al. 2022) highlights the symbolic significance of these environments. Drawing on the idea that educationscapes transmit multicultural and multilingual values, this study offers a comparative analysis of the linguistic landscape of three higher education institutions in Romania with study programmes in Hungarian: the University of Medicine in Târgu-Mureș, Babeș–Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, and Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania. It examines the transmission of multicultural and multilingual values through the linguistic landscapes of these universities and how institutional signage reflects or contradicts official commitments to linguistic diversity. Drawing on the Multilingual Inequality in Public Spaces (MIPS) model, the study integrates three data sources: policy documents, photographic documentation of signage (n ≈ 250–300 per site), and semi-structured interviews with Hungarian minority students. Findings reveal a discrepancy between institutional language policies and actual linguistic visibility. Romanian predominates in top-down signage, even in officially multicultural universities, while Hungarian is often marginal or absent. English signage may supersede Hungarian, reflecting internationalization priorities. Student interviews underscore the symbolic importance of signage in shaping perceptions of inclusion, recognition, and identity, while demonstrating a critical awareness of linguistic hierarchies.