The worst of Polish education. No wonder Polish universities are bottom of the list.

AFAIR, it is three times - the last retake being in front of an independent panel of examiners - and if you fail them, you get a fail grade for each which stays in your files. Of course if you fail the last one, you're either out or have to retake the whole course or sometimes the whole year. Even if you do ultimately pass, all those extra fail grades have a rather nasty influence on your overall grade average; additionally, more often than not, you have to pay for the retakes. All this makes taking multiple retake exams rather less attractive than it might otherwise be. Nevertheless, it's a way out for someone who's had temporary problems and wants to get back on track.

What is important is standardization of the exams.For example many Greek universities have very difficult exams while their degrees are relatively of low value.The difficulty of the exams does not mean a thing and cripples graduates who get lower grades at absolvement than if they had studied in a UK university with reasonable exams difficulty.

Proffessors who cannot have their children,relatives or friendly persons or whoever want in the university tend to be rather strict and put extraordinary difficult exams.When their relatives,offsprings,heirs or political supporters get in the university as students they lower the difficulty of the exams so the latter can pass.There is no way the middle class will ever accept equal terms in exams of their offsprings in fact it is a thing they constantly fight for to get double standards.

I have to agree that particular ranking is a little bizarre.

Where has St Andrews disappeared to? It regularly ranks highly in these.

Also, Trinity College Dublin usually hovers just outside the top 10 in Europe.

It's based on the number of bloody website hits! Doh!

From the "About us" bit:

4icu.org University Web Ranking Methodology

Universities and Colleges are ranked by our exclusive 4icu.org University Web Ranking.

The ranking is based upon an algorithm including three unbiased and independent web metrics extracted from three different search engines:

Google Page Rank
Yahoo Inbound Links
Alexa Traffic Rank

etc

We do not claim - by any means - to rank organisations or their programs, by the quality of education or level of services provided. The 4icu.org University Web Ranking is not an academic ranking and should not be adopted as the main criteria for selecting an higher education organization where to study.

Ha, that's actually really quite funny.

Eh, if you only could think rationally :

The aim of this website is to provide an approximate popularity ranking of world Universities and Colleges based upon the popularity of their websites. This is intended to help international students and academic staff to understand how popular a specific University/College is in a foreign country.

We do not claim - by any means - to rank organisations or their programs, by the quality of education or level

of services provided. Memorise that by heart , seeanus .

The 4icu.org University Web Ranking is not an academic ranking and should not be adopted as the main criteria for selecting an higher education organization where to study.

4icu.org/menu/about.htm

They're still pish.

A real ranking table such as The Times lists the two best Polish universities as between 350 - 400th best in Europe. And I get no pleasure from that, as I intend to apply to a Polish uni to do a doctorate.

You are right , but seeanus smartie couldnt read it even though it is in written in his native language .

Thanks, but I'm not sure your endorsements will do my fledgling street cred much good. No offence. (as my 13yo daughter says after something offensive)

magpie Don`t worry , it is The Times list . Have you ever spotted something positive in English press about Poland at all ?

Those who regard only level of education and disregard other matters will not be disappointed here . It all depends on what kind of people you will encounter on your way at the university . I could recommend Olsztyn which is very modern and the staff is very friendly without buffoon types .

You or the Times....hmmm that's tricky one :-)

time means

Sorry , but to me it is just a rubbish stat. No drudge British writer has anything to say about Polish uni level . If you think otherwise thats your opinion and let me have mine . Don`t cite any English press to change my mind, pls . Don`t you think is pointless.

Is there a Polish version of the Times list?

The rankings are actually based on things such as academic/original research etc, patents created and so on. I take all of the lists with a pinch of salt, as not all of the lists can be correct. And, they tend to generalise too much, as in they don't take into account specialisms, after all, how do you rank a uni that focuses on medicine and law against one that focuses on mechanical and computer engineering?

And that one created by the Spanish guy is so crap too. He has the first 17 unis as American with Oxford below the university of Tallahassee or some nonsense. He must be after a visa.

I take most stats, polls, surveys etc with a pinch of salt.

Right, that's it. The level of education here is PISH!

I thought I would help my 14yo stepson do his humanities/social science homework. The task was to read some newspapers, look at current events and summarise what is going on.

He went to three newspaper websites, copied the first few lines from a few articles into a word document and...and....and.....that was it. I told him that my daughter in the UK does the same thing, but in addition, she must summarise it in her own words, to show that she understands what she has just read.

His response to this is that he should do the same more or less, but everyone in the class does it this way and he gets a '5' every week for it, and so he should, as it should be grammatically and factually correct in it's summary, being written by a journalist wit 30 years experience.

This means that:

a) the teacher doesn't read them
b) the teacher doesn't care
c) i don't know what other interpretation there is

I am so disappointed, I can't describe it. Oh, I just did.

please read the OP before u post.

if it's off topic, it goes in the bin.

OK, but with respect and in all fairness, it is in line with the theme of education in PL which leads on to university. And OK, maybe "The level of education here is PISH!" is a generalisation, but I was very disappointed.

If that type of thing - either wholesale class laziness - or teacher apathy exists for a class of 14 year olds, how can it not travel upstream into higher education and therefore university, which is not and cannot be isolated by that which precedes it?

But, at the end of the day it's your forum and you shall make decisions as you see fit.

It's called the top 100 list of universities and I didn't say anything about the quality of the teaching at all. In fact, I'm sceptical of such lists as they convey little. Polonthemeds bit, as usual.

Wrocław is right, polonthemeds, you need to return to the OP. I can confirm that it happens. Can you?

I have conversation English in high schools near Wroclaw.

I watch many of my students prepare these cheat sheets in class. It is really amazing to me. When I was a student you never wanted to get caught cheating. Here they just don't care. Most of them tell me that as long as it's not for some major exam nothing will happen.

There are some teachers that take a harder line. I noticed that one of the teachers had all the crib sheets collected.

From what I saw the cheating rate is between 70-80% if not higher.

When I started teaching at a Polish university in 1999, I was shocked at how much the students tried to cheat. The whole ramming-the-information-down-the-students'-throats thing has always turned me off to Polish education. My students were very smart, but were practically forced to cheat. Tell me, what is the advantage of knowing the capital city of every country in the world?

Potential world pub quiz champion?

I used to cheat occasionally and see nothing wrong in that. What would memorizing a damn large amount of text about some bacteries would have given me ? I knew back then that I would never need it, anyway I would have remembered nothing about it soon later as human brain can accommodate limited amount of memorized information, memorizing crap about viruses you forget crap about bacteries... what's the point then ? That's why instead of putting that mess into my brain, I use to put it into my pocket. The system is wrong, not the kids.

please don't say you are studying medicine

Well there's a surprise.

Yes,when they give you 500 pages to memorize and stuff in your brain just 15 days before the exam what are you supposed to do?Even people with very strong memorization skills have problems.In european countries the material is not tested in the same way as in anglosaxon countries by multiple choice questions and the tests are not standardized meaning 80% or 90% of the class may fail not because students are unprepared but because questions are rather difficult.

Also in countries with high levels of corruption offsprings with connections and money can get a degree independantly of any capabilities they will pass any exams no matter what they write in them and this is known to everybody.Noone dares to put everyone under the same tests and grade with the same system blindly and when it happens the offsprings of benefited classes always have a percentage.

In countries like Ukraine it is extreme because there you can buy every test in university with 20 dollars.So only the poor students without cheating skills study hard the rest either pays or cheats.

That's not even funny.

it is not meant to be

bacteria and virus in the same post?
it is possible it is a biology exam though

That makes me feel better.

Actually, to be honest, I find it really worrisome. Mrs magpie was recently diagnosed with cancer and over the last two weeks we have met with four specialists: 2 x oncologist, a radiologist and a surgeon. I keep wondering which ones cheated at school... 75% of them based on the anecdotal evidence in this thread.

Given that she was given the all clear 18 months a go by a local specialist who apparently couldn't read the f'king scans properly (a cheat?), I seriously worry about it after reading the comments in this thread, especially those condoning cheating.

I started with law studies and I was prepared out of 800 pages for 750. Three questions, random, verbal, nothing left nothing right from those three. Once out of 82 lessons, I learned 80 and drew out the card with the one not learned enough, I just read it, hell!! I passed 13 of those exams there, full two and a half years of horror, and decided to study psychology, which was more elite, 7 candidates for 1 student place, and IQ test was part of entrance exams. Average IQ of psychology student was 120, if I remember correctly. Then we had to memorize again 2300 pages, 2000 pages, but they mostly gave options of multiple choice written type of exams, with demanded 60 % to pass which was making it less gloomy, although for 5 years I studied in average 6 hours per day, every day, with all in total (I summed it up) 3 months of break during those 5 years. I developed some strange myopia that was gone after I graduated. Ophthalmologists who originally diagnosed it, and suggested glasses were after I noticed that reading gets only more difficult with the old ones, surprised to determine it was gone and glasses should be thrown away.

So, multiple choice promotes some sort of additional motivation knowing that there is high chance that you will be rewarded according to your knowledge, effort, if you learn 70 % of demanded you'll pass with that grade 7, that would be a C I think. Strictly verbal exams like the conservative law faculty was offering was promoting cheating (scripts instead of books, empty verbal proliferation and mostly reward rarely was adequate, somebody who learned 50% and had a luck to choose 3 questions among those got a 10 (A A), and somebody who missed 25% and had a bad luck to draw one from those 25'% was failing. It was DEMOTIVATING.

Actually, this depicts the goal of the studying those. Psychology- leftists who discriminate against less gifted people , and promote fairness, and Law, conservatives that teach you should how to get through the system and become a fraud unless you want to suffer horribly :))))

In multiple choice system it is quite sure that you will pass if you have studied adequately.On the other hand it is difficult to get a high grade even if you have studied excessively.On the other hand on answering questions by writing text you may fail even if you have studied good cause the questions are rather few to cover the material.However you can get a very high grade deviating largely from average if you study excessively.

In our national exams to enter university I had learned 800 pages of physics,chemistry etc by heart.Not even a comma escaped me I wrote everything exactly as it stood in the book.Combined with use of heavy mathematics way beyond taught material in school thanks to private lessons every Greek student has for at least two years I could beat everyone in grade because there was simply no possibility that anyone would write better than me the memorized material.

Opposite to that in anglosaxon type exams I could never manage to get too high grade because Anglosaxons consciously crippled memorization benefits.There are several ways how they do that they certainly have direction against the heavy memorizer and test beater.

It is known how those test should be made, demand that question ought to be representative for the entire subject must be met. Also certain precent of open- end questions should be there, perhaps also one short essay type of question and the rest closed questions with answers that are all to some degree plausible. So, those tests cover usually the complete exam material of 2000 pages via 4 written exams, each with more than 50 questions. It lasts longer but to achieve accuracy and fairness that is OK.

Curiously, being small group of 50 students who were on those exams, usually the rankings (grades of students) were similar from exam to exam, same people achieved more or less same ranks, proves that people who have higher abilities and put more effort were righteously rewarded for both using that method.


Yes, it was hard or impossible to get 10 in Psychology, very rarely, and it meant that person learned the subject to the last detail.

I prefer that system than the one where verbalization and personal contact can contaminate (and they usually do) the evaluation of the student's knowledge by the professor.

I gave up Law after passing Criminal law, general part and when professor told me that she will give me 9, that all facts are told, but not presented in a way it is expected by future lawyer, then she listed my student book and said that for the same reason other teachers were giving me 8 mostly. She said that facts in law sometimes have less significance than verbal presentation of facts?!, and I told her that I will think about continuing law if that is the case. Then 1999. came and ambivalence was solved. I quit. ( I was on 3rd year, and I was for the second time learning the International Public law, with all the idiotic details about UN and international legal acts, while bombs who flew against those super cute declarations were making whoooozeee, boooooom above my head repeatedly. Then it was over. Thank you good soldiers for helping me become good and poor person, not some filthy rich lawyer)