A recent CBOS survey showed that 78% of the Poles surveyed felt higher education is now a mass phenomenon. What are your thoughts behind all the many fly-by-night colleges, higher schools and effective diploma mills now accepting tuition-fee-paying students?
Does a degree from even a state uni in Poland guarantee any kind of future these days? Or is it like the joke: What does one recent uni graduate say to another in PO-ruled Poland: 'Zapiekanka, please!'
What are things like in your home country (if you are not a Polish national)?
I really haven't studied the Good Father's Higher School of Social and Media Culture in Toruń, so I don't know wherther it qualifies. In case your itnerested, check it out:
I've read somewhere that around 50% of people age 25 - 35 have graduate diploma in Poland. huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/22/countries-with-the-most-c_n_655393.html#s117642&title=Israel_436_
It's similar situation to the USA. And in the end universities are to filter better from worse students. It is possible both here and in USA by watching which university somebody graduated.
So nothing special. It's the time of mass education in whole world and in the future will be even more mass, when online teaching will become more popular. At least small private schools in Poland allow direct contact of student with teacher, while many best universities have hundreds of students during lectures, so it's harder to ask question.
And the most important is what student represents by himself, not school. And when 50% of population studies, then naturally some schools must have lower level.
Different question is if it's good direction. Both USA and Poland have high unemployment. On the other hand Germany with lower number of uni grads and higher emphasis on learning by work has the lowest unemployment in Europe.
Monitor, totally agree with your comment ''learning by work'' In the UK something like 85% of graduates end up working in a job that isn't connected to the degree they obtain.
So many of my friends here in Poland say similar things, such as, they have a degree in accountancy but work for IBM or IKEA etc.... The one thing that I am amazed by is that almost everyone I talk to appears to have a degree, how do employers looking for new staff choose if 10 applicants have the same level of education, is it just a lottery or luck or of course the ''who you know'' comes into play.
Of course from 2004 many ''graduates'' from Poland went to the UK, people with degrees working in warehouse's but this obviously was purely financial, many people would tell me that they had a degree in business management (for example) but could earn 2 or 3 times more box chucking for UPS or FedEx.
Unfortunately in the UK there is still ''university snobbery'' where degrees from certain university's with the ''old school tie'' networks still carry a lot more weight in the work place.
The unemployment level in Poland is currently about 8% with youth unemployment at close to 19%, It seems a good idea to educate people but appears the jobs are not available when they have finished their education.
Although it was the Governments Policy to have educated people i.e. get every student into a University, the Government did not realize that there will NOT be the jobs for them when they finished. This is of course, one way of reducing the unemployment rate.
When everyone has a degree, it is the same as if no one had a degree. I am of the opinion that it is better to have steady employment by becoming a plumber, electrician, joiner, car mechanic, builder (and not have a degree) than to have a degree and earn a quarter if not less than a person without a degree but with a skill in their hands.
Somehow you have to put food on the table and having a piece of paper is not the same as having the money to buy food.
A recent movement among highschool students aka 'pupils' in Poland is called "MATURA, BZDURA!"
So much for the mass phenomenon of Poles going to university:-) According to the above survey, Poles feel that they, as well as their ever more successful European neighbors, go to school for too long and that the four-year US-college system after highschool may be superior:-)
Can't recall unfortunately in which Polish magazine or journal I read this.
Oh, really? I thought it was attempting to show how dissatisfied young, student-age Poles have become with all this school-book knowledge leaving them uncompetitive in the world market, filling their heads with theory instead of practical application!
