Detractors often allege that Polish education entails little more than filling students' heads with useless information. Polish engineers might be au fait with how crickets propagate, they claim, but are completely at sea when it comes to color-coding three-phase electrical cables in line with European standards. So how come Polish students manage to do so well in reputable international competitions like the Microsoft-Image Cup? Polish education must have something going for it.

Did you know that Warsaw University has long headed TopCoder's School Rankings or that Wrocław University is also in the top 10? Hello? We're talking about the most prestigious IT rankings in the world here! Education may just be one field in which Poland can hold its own against all-comers.

Poland powers ahead

Polish universities may have some way to go before they catch up with U.S. standards but they're starting to give their fellow Europeans a real contest. Little wonder then that they are beginning to attract more and more students from abroad. Even art colleges are enrolling foreigners now. A lot of institutions have had to introduce English language courses to keep up with demand. Łódź University, for example, offers English language courses in management, international relations, IT, economics, and finance and administration. The immediate financial benefits are obvious. Academics are paid three times as much to lecture in English as they are to lecture in Polish. But the benefits to universities and academics transcend the commercial. Foreign students, unlike their Polish peers, are not afraid of speaking out or challenging their lecturers. A couple of foreigners in a class can stimulate intellectual discourse considerably with obvious implications for teaching quality. Providing international education enhances Poland's international standing and benefits "Polish lobbies" abroad.

Why Poland?

There are now almost 12,000 foreign students studying at Polish universities, an increase of 16.4 percent over the previous academic year. What brings them here?

Perhaps it's the fact that Poland has almost 80 universities conferring internationally recognized degrees and diplomas and that the best of them have the highest international accreditations. The Warsaw School of Economics (SGH) is a member of the Community of European Management Schools, a network of Europe's leading economics and management schools. The Leon Koźmiński Academy of Entrepreneurship and Management in Warsaw was the first university in Central and Eastern Europe to receive European Quality Improvement System accreditation. EQUIS is the leading international system of quality assessment, improvement, and accreditation of higher education institutions in management and business administration. Cracow's Jagiellonian University Medical College, which offers English language courses, has been accredited by the U.S. Department of Education.

Then again, perhaps it's the low tuition fees and relatively cheap cost of living that tilt the balance in favor of Poland. Our average annual fees of zl.10,000 to zl.12,000 are a fifth to a quarter of what would have to be paid in most comparable countries and only an eighth of what would have to be forked out in the U.S.

Education by the numbers

Poland's Central Statistical Office (GUS) has come up with some interesting facts and figures for the 2006/2007 academic year. Universities are leading the charge with 3,800 foreign students. Medical colleges, with 3,100 foreign enrollments, come next, followed by schools of economics with 2,200, and technical colleges with 899. Medical courses, with 3,600 students, are far and away the most popular. By way of digression, it should be pointed out that 98 percent of Polish graduates who sit examinations to practice medicine in the U.S. pass easily. What better proof could there be that Polish medical degrees meet the highest international standards? Economics and administration courses bring in 2,300 foreign students making them the second most popular. Next come the social sciences with 1,600 and the humanities with 1,600. The majority of foreign students (7,800) are European and most of them hail from Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Norway and Sweden. Around 30 percent of them are of Polish origin and at least some of these must have come here in search of their roots as well as an education.

Signals from Brussels

Right now, it is relatively easy for Polish students to study elsewhere in the EU and for other European students to come here. Erasmus, an EU educational program, plays no small part in this as it funds half the costs of living abroad while studying. Poland has been participating in the program since the 1998/1999 academic year. In 1995-2006 Erasmus was part of the EU's Socrates program, and since the beginning of the 2007/2008 academic year it has been part of a new project called The Lifelong Learning Program intended for the 2007-2013 period. The Lifelong Learning Program covers the entire Socrates package as well as programs such as Leonardo da Vinci, Jean Monnet, e-Learning and European Language Label.

But Polish universities are getting signals that there are plans afoot for one-for-one exchanges. This can only be bad news for Poland. There have always been significantly more Poles wanting to study abroad than there have been foreigners wanting to study here. British universities have already served notice that they do not intend to renew their contracts with their Polish counterparts and Scandinavian universities are undecided. Poland needs to do something to make life easier for foreigners wanting to study here and soon. Introducing student visas, as many other European countries have done, would not be a bad move.

Weighing the pros and cons

More than half the young foreign students here rate their lecturers very highly in terms of knowledge and teaching skills, according to a poll conducted by the Education Research & Development Center of the Academy of Humanities and Economics in Łódź. Quality, then, is clearly a big plus in Polish education. So what are the drawbacks? Well, we don't expect you to fall over if we tell you that foreign students complain about internet access and sporting facilities. Polish students are forever making the same gripes. Poland's health services leave a lot to be desired and dormitory accommodation isn't exactly five-star. Still, 97 percent of respondents would recommend Poland to their countrymen as a good place to study.

Cream of the Crop

The most renowned places of higher learning in Poland include the University of Warsaw; the Jagiellonian University in Cracow, the country's oldest university, established in 1364; the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań; the universities of Gdańsk, Wrocław and Łódź; the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń; the Silesian University in Katowice; the Marie Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin; and the Cardinal Wyszyński University in Warsaw. Among the most prestigious technical colleges are those in Wrocław, Warsaw and Poznań as well as Cracow's AGH University of Science and Technology. Warsaw's Military Academy of Technology (WAT) also plays an important role in higher education.

At the head of the league table for business schools and unchallenged for many years is the Warsaw School of Economics (SGH), which last year celebrated its 100th anniversary. The Medical College of the Jagiellonian University in Cracow and the medical academies in Warsaw and Poznań are among Poland's top medical schools. Warsaw Agricultural University (SGGW) is regarded as Poland's best agricultural college. A special position is held by the Catholic University of Lublin (KUL), which, although formally regarded as a private institution, has in fact been subsidized by the state for several years.

Krzysztof Jendrzejczak