Just visited Poland - here is my random rant

My suggestion is that it's not a good idea to force graduates to pay back their "debt to society". Some will over time, some won't - that's the risk the state takes if it runs universities. How about trying to make Poland a more attractive place to live and work in, so that young people don't immediately move abroad once they graduate? The last few years seem like a festival of bad ideas to me - as if the government really wanted the average Pole to hate them deeply. It's death by pinpricks.

So what is the best way forward in your opinion ? Please just don't say increase salaries be more creative.

It's worth pointing out that Poles have really got the bug for travelling - it's nothing to do with salaries in many cases, but rather a desire to see the world. I know so many people who have gone to poorer countries to live - so it's not just about money, but rather something else too. The way that Poland really went for Erasmus and Comenius in a huge way too is also significant.

It's also worth pointing out that "making Poland more attractive" usually involves financial bribes.

I think the best option is to give them a choice - they can either serve their time or pay their way. Either works - philosophy graduates might be happy to have a job for those two years, whereas someone studying computer science might prefer to simply pay the State back. Either way, the current model is unsustainable.

Exactly. If the state start forcing young people to work for x years after they graduate or pay back the costs not improving anything in the country at the same time, people will just start leaving right after matura... Besides, how one can be forced to work for x years, when there are simply no jobs for a large part of the workforce ? Far more students than the economy really needs is another issue but governments do nothing with that as that helps them to "improve" unemployment statistics...


You're asking what should be improved ? Better ask what shouldn't be improved, the list would be much shorter.

I mentioned above that if universities are forced to find such jobs for people, then you'll see a dramatic reduction in the number of students.

For what it's worth, in regards to "lack of jobs" - I'm struggling to find a capable German teacher. I've advertised the position in all the usual places and still can't find one that is actually worth employing.

Two things firstly what is education for and secondly why do progressive countries have a progressive tax system.

Education, I believe is not just to produce business people. Education is for the mind body and spirit or at least that is the Dominican (Catholic) view of education which has recently become trendy. It doesn't matter what someone does after they graduate, no one complains what happens to women after they leave school. It is not a waste of education and resources to teach women to read for example.

A progressive tax system allows the builder to partially fund third level education, their son or daughter may benefit from it. Limiting free education created discrimination in education.

That's totally unrealistic.


I can't comment on teaching sector but overall you seem to think that the whole country is like Poznań, no it isn't, in majority of a country the situation is far worse, not only in Poland B ex-PGRs but also in many large cities.

Perhaps. But it may also be a badly, badly needed wake-up call for a hugely bloated State university sector that is increasing rapidly.

Tuition fees are still the easiest option - and they would certainly discourage the take-up of unemployment factory subjects.

For what it's worth, at least one of the universities here requires students to do work experience within the university-owned properties. That usually translates into "slave labour in the fields" - but if they can do it, anyone can.


But why should the country pay for stuff just for the fancy of the student? It makes no sense to subsidise people who want to learn something just because it's 'trendy' or because they don't want to enter the real world. Poland needs money to plug the pensions gap, needs money to keep reconstructing the country and so on. They've had 12 years of free education to that point - a university education isn't going to make a huge difference.


Perhaps the situation is far worse because of the university sector producing so many worthless graduates?

The whole university sector is rotten to the core.

Surely Poland, France too for that matter, doesn't/don't hold the monopoly on entrenched bureaucracy. Universities after all are only microcosms of human society, complete with their petty fiefdoms, turf wars and territorial boundries. Ivy League colleges, i.e. universities, here in the States are little different, I can assure you; I attended one, Columbia! Like governments, they're rife with infighting, pettiness and bigotry!!!

Politics as usual:-)

A planned economy doesn't work.

What's planned about refusing to subsidise such courses? If people want them, the universities can provide them at market cost. No-one is stopping them competing on the open market for such courses - it's the current system of opening many "directions" and then expecting the State to pay up that I object to.

Poland doesn't need thousands of history graduates.

This is exactly what is wrong with the world, education is not a commodity.

Germany's the same!

For years now, the government's been trying in vain to reduce the number of student loans or tuition assistance available, e.g. to German Lit., Philosophy or similar humanities majors. The traditional year-long run of school study's been under attack by Germany's Bundestag, willing to make deep cuts in order to streamline Germany's often out-of-date educational system. Students simply stay in school far too long for industry's tastes and state-sponsored education's being forced to rethink a more US-style strategy for making education both more "attractive" as well as (shudder!!!) PROFITABLE ^^^

Barney & Co. the thing is that the whole educational reform debate in Europe is hopelessly intertwined with the immigration issue! As long as ethnic Caucasian Europeans want to study, rather than do manual or "blue-collar" work, non-European labor will lowball the economies of France, Germany, The Netherlands, Sweden etc. right out of existence, it's as simple as that.

Too many philosophy majors is only the tip of the iceberg. Once upon a time, even before WWII, plumbers, waiters, farm hands, busboys, construction workers and mechanics were native to the respective European country in which they were working. Well, this ain't the world we live in any longer and as long as certain people feel that only darker-skinned foreigners should do difficult, dangerous and dirty jobs, we'll still be having this discussion from now until the cows come home.

I think you are putting the cart before the horse those things are linked in that the free movement of labour is the high price for the free movement of capital.

..........merely facilitated by the liberal policies of post-War Europe going back almost fifty years or longer, at the very least! These issues didn't arise overnight, they never do. Had for example Germany been less willing to try and make amends for her part in WWII, she would scarcely have invited half-a-million or more third worlders to come teeming into the Federal Republic in search of cheap labor. This therefore would have placed much less burden on at that time West Germany's universities, hence on the economy in general. When one considers that in around 1965, a scant four years since Italian, Spanish and Greek laborers were invited to come to Germany, clearly less than one percent of those ever even attended a Germany university (much less a Gymnasium, at best, several years of primary school!). Instead, they went to work in the Opel factory in Ruesselsheim on the assemly line (lowballing their German counterparts), later replaced or joined in many cases by the Turks!

Is it then really "the cart before the horse"???

I agree if people want to go to university they should pay for it, in Scotland you have English students sitting next to Polish students the English must pay university fees and the Poles study for free due to EU law. Scotland is subsidised by the English tax payer.There are large numbers of Pole studying overseas at the expense of foreign tax payers.


As an add on, I would like to point out in Poland there are people making money out of advising youg Poles how they can study overseas and not pay fees, they also assist them in applying for grants and loans. These people are not regulated advising someone about taking on debt is a financial service, this sector in Poland is mushrooming as more Poles understand a foriegn degree gives them a much better chance in the marketplace than a Polish degree.

No. That's not what I meant. I meant finally making it easier to run your own business (e.g. not having to pay so much ZUS if you don't have enough profit would be a great start), finally doing something real and practical about the money-eating monster that ZUS actually is, relaxing the labour laws a little to make life a bit easier for small employers, withdrawing some of the powers and rights that had been granted to the tax authorities recently; all in all, making it easier to breathe. Even going back to the way things were in the mid-nineties would be fine. Since then, hundreds of new very detailed laws had been passed on virtually every aspect of doing business in Poland, most of them restrictive.


Spot on.

Yes

There was next to no burden placed upon the Education sector by these immigrants if anything they allowed the economy to grow thus being a net benefit to those countries. The individuals who benefited were those German citizens who had their education funded by the economic activity of migrants. They did not "low ball" white workers there was a labour shortage. Without the migrants there would have been much less growth.

The commodification of third level education is a direct result of government policy where by the hoards of psychology students subsidise more (obviously) vocational disciplines.

To fund all this the base has been widened producing an indirect tax on the middle class.

Does one really need a degree to tell someone to stack the beans?

Magda and Lyszko have made solid points/observations in this thread.
Working on a farm back home is considered honest work. Repairing or installing plumbing and irrigation is too.
I've found there to be both less respect given to "dirty" work here and that may well be one of the disincentives Magda alluded to. But yes, certainly incentives are needed, that being said, until a perfect system is designed then penalties are probably going to also be necessary.

Don't be offended, but that's something Stalin could have said! The one lesson to be learnt from 20th century history is that a perfect system does not exist, and never will, unless people become angels first - alas, the only way to achieve that is to kill them.

if it was for ecological reasons, it would cost considerably more to discourage people from buying them. for the guy that just spent 178.20 on groceries, increasing his bill to 178.30 because he needs 2 bags to fit all his stuff he couldn't possibly carry in his bare hands.....hardly a deterrent.

charging for "lemon to tea" is for the environment too?

None taken, but my only point was that incentives are nice but until a system of taxation and governance that brings out only the best in people, there will be people who just aren't or choose not to be honest. For those people, penalties do serve a purpose:/

So you would like to do away with all tax advisors and accountants and introduce more tax revenue collectors in their place. As long as the sky is blue the tax authorities will create laws and the tax advisors will find way around them for the wealthy, then only the little people get squeezed.

I agree with the lawn bit, there is nothing like a well kept lawn, something i hope to see in Poland in the future more often

The point of "skool" "edukayshone" is conditioning. In Huxley's Brave new World, people are caste conditioned in test tubes, well that is what education is, conditioning for the work place and class structure.

In England and probably the States as well - definitely. But Polish education used to be different, and hopefully still is at least in some places.

I agree, but I think we all know that there are hordes of pensioners out there who never paid a thing into the "convertible" Zloty - so their contributions were more or less completely destroyed by the economic policies of the PRL and the inflation of the early 1990's. They all now need to be paid in hard Zloty - so small business owners end up getting robbed to pay for them. It's a controversial view, but I believe that pension contributions pre-1990 should have been written off. That generation was massively subsidised by the State to a certain extent - and they continue to be subsidised.


I'd love to hear a practical suggestion in this regard. About the only thing I can think of is waiting until the deficit shrinks, then paying off the debts of ZUS and radically reforming the whole institution at the same time.


To be fair, small business owners can simply refuse to give proper contracts. I've always thought that the nonsense that is umowa zlecenie/umowa o prace should be abolished and replaced with something in the middle. But to do that, you also have to contend with the masses of moustaches who believe that it's their right to do as little as possible for as much money as possible.


It's probably necessary in the long run - the black market economy here is big by all accounts.


But can Poland afford to pay people to do frivolous things that they won't use afterwards anyway? Is there really any need to have so many professors employed who are experts in some area when Poland has barely any connections with that area anyway?

For instance - there is a distinct lack of sworn translators for many languages. Shouldn't we focus on training them, rather than on educating people to understand philosophy?

So basically you are based outside of Poland, you are one of the exits.

You mean that because of the accident of their date of birth, they should be left to die in poverty?


You lost me there. What moustaches? Most people I know in PL are just trying to survive in the unfavourable conditions that they face. Some are quite well-off, others are really struggling, and have been for the last several years, with no relief in sight.


And what creates a black market economy in the first place? Why do people cheat and lie? Usually because they are being strangled by the loving hand of the State.


How can you tell what will or will not be used? Studying philosophy seems like a better option than studying marketing and management, at any rate; at least you learn something important and timeless.

There are literally hundreds of thousands of trained linguists out there, and many of them do work as translators, but they are not motivated financially or otherwise to make the extra effort and become sworn. It's not a question of training, but of status, career opportunities, and pay. So no, we can't really "train" people to become sworn translators.


No, I am definitely not an exit, whatever that means ;-) And what's wrong with spending a few years in England when English is my line of work? I'm investing in my future, wherever that might take me :-)

It would have forced society to help - but don't forget that many of those people also managed to obtain properties at a great price, or managed to get municipal housing with far lower rents than would be expected in the private sector. The situation now where there are many elderly people living in subsidised municipal housing while also being subsidised with their pensions is an economic disaster for our generation.

I've said it many times on this forum - the current generation aged 50-70 will more or less bleed the next generations dry.


The problem is that the labour laws also keep people in such conditions. I know several female small business owners who openly admit that they will never, ever, ever give another female "umowa o prace" for fear of what can happen to their business if the women start mucking about. And this comes from women, not men!

(as for moustaches - I use that to describe anyone working in a highly unionised job)

The whole thing is a rotten circle - the laws protect employees, so employes don't want to give them the rights for fear of being abused by employees, and so it continues.


At least in my humble opinion, Poles quite like that strangling. They may complain about it, but when you consider the vast amount of idiotic comments about how the PRL was better because of x, y and z - you start to see that Poles quite enjoy such an approach to life.

As for what creates it? The robbing of people to pay for pensions today.


Simple : look at what the economy needs and fund it. Anything that isn't needed (such as all those things mentioned) can be paid for via tuition fees. Voila.

(I was stunned recently to discover that the university here has a Polish expert in the Scots language. Why?)


Can you explain more?


In your line of work, spending time in England is the best thing you can do :)