Studies In Poland, is it easy to survive on part-time jobs?

That school in Jozefów is a joke. An MBA from there is worth nothing on the job market, in Poland or anywhere else. If some "recruiter", "consultant" or "agent" is telling you otherwise, they are lying to steal your money.


It is practically impossible for foreign students to find work in Poland unless they speak Polish well. Make your plans on the very safe assumption that you will never be able to earn a single penny during your stay in Poland. If you need to earn to pay for your studies and stay, then Poland is not the country for you.

About actually asked about the locality rather than the institution. I'm sure he has sufficient critical thinking skills to evaluate the institution without necessarily deciding to rely on (very) third party input from someone who has no direct experience of it, and without cut and pasted phrases.

Perhaps he would do well to Google the Indian community in Warsaw. They have a good forum and message board which has contributors who are currently studying there.

@jon357

This "student" is not a real student, and has no intention of studying, in Poland or elsewhere. He is an economic refugee who has paid some "consultant" or "agent" to find him a way into the EU. He was too clueless to figure out that the "consultant" was a scam artist preying on desperate, gullible and clueless economic refugees like himself. The "consultant" arranged for admission to a sham "school", probably in return for a kickback from the "school". The "school" gets to keep the rest of the "tuition", regardless of whether the "student" is granted a visa to Poland or not. The "consultant" is making money from both sides. If granted entry into Poland, the "student" considers his lost money well spent, as he will abscond to live and work illegally in a richer country, probably the UK. If not granted entry, there is nothing he can do, as he was himself part of the fraud. The Polish government couldn't care less because these "students" are absconding, so it's someone else's problem.

As far as critical thinking skills go, you seem to lack any yourself. You let yourself be convinced that this was a genuine student. You fell for the line that there is a legitimate school in Józefów that grants genuine MBAs (there isn't). And you failed to register that this "student" has absolutely no interest in living and studying in Poland, but was bound for greener pastures at the earliest opportunity. In fact, the overwhelming bulk of the foreigners you seem eager to settle in Poland are using it merely as a stepping stone to the richer countries of the EU. If you can't recognize a cookie-cutter case of one of the most common immigration scams, that doesn't say much about your critical thinking skills.

Genuine students ask completely different questions. By far most of the "students" who post here are not genuine students. If the subject of part-time work comes up, guaranteed that they have been told by their "consultant" that work is easily available.

That is a value judgment. He asked a question about the local area. He didn't ask for an opinion of the institution, not of the advice of any consultant.

His future plans for settling in Poland or elsewhere are entirely his affair. He didn't ask for advice on this.

As I said, he would do well to make contact with the Indian community in Warsaw (they have fora and message boards) where he is more likely to find an answer to the question he asked.

I wish him luck for his stay in Poland and any further travels.

@jon357

Any "Indian community" in Warsaw would have little interest in (yet another) economic refugee. They know the drill.

They actually have message boards and fora which the OP would do well to have a look at.

@jon357

You are aware that there are less than four thousand Indians in the whole country, about a third of which are students, mostly fake and a few real, and the overwhelming bulk of the rest are transient workers biding their time to move onto richer countries. Few of these are interested in any sort of "Indian community" in Poland, or anything about Poland at all, except in regards to its utility as a stepping stone. That leaves precious few genuine long-term residents capable of building a community of sorts. And those precious few have absolutely no interest in helping economic refugees.

I'm not sure how that statement is relevant to the OP's very specific question.

He would do well to check out the fora and boards run by the Indian community in Warsaw.

That's not totally true a lot of Indians that make good money in it have made pl their home

@Dirk diggler

"Many", no. A few, yes. A couple of hundred, at most, have been here for at least five years and have actually settled.

Few Indians have any interest in settling in Poland because much higher wages are to be earned in the West. With absolutely nothing to hold them in Poland, they move westward rather quickly, legally or illegally. Of the four thousand or so Indians who are supposed to be in Poland, a good number have absconded to live and work illegally in the west.

I'll believe that when I overhear Indian looking children speaking to each other in Polish (the same way I heard Vietnamese kids do back in the 1990s)

@mafketis

The number of Indian children who have learned even basic conversational Polish wouldn't fill a single school bus.


I answered the OP's question. If any "consultant" told him that he will be able to find work in Poland, they are lying in order to defraud him. And no, no "Indian community" is going to help him find a job, or want to have anything to do with him.

Yes, Most are either entrepreneurs who have business here or are specialists. More and more students come however there are often visa issues. Most foreign students not on Erasmus or doing a doctorate or with pre-existing connections with Poland come from places where there's a specific agreement and funding in place at ministry level - more and more countries are doing this.

Re. work, there's more and more, however as with a lot of student work, most of it is transient and not well paid.

That's correct. A select few who have figured out a way to earn a good living in Poland. They have little sympathy for economic refugees. Any jobs they have would go to family and friends, or at least someone from the same caste/clan/class as them. There is no solidarity among Indians as Indians. If someone is not from the same caste/clan/class, they might as well be from Mars.


Obviously. The overwhelming majority of Indians applying for student visas to Poland are economic refugees who intend to abscond. The second largest group are victims of education-related scams. Genuine students are a distinct minority. Even so, the majority of the genuine students do not finish their studies in Poland, and either return home, or make their way west, legally or illegally. Those very few who are studying in Polish are most likely to finish. Those studying in English are overwhelmingly likely to drop out.

By far the majority of Indian students in Poland never find work at all during their stay. The few that do are those very few who have learned Polish and those who have saleable high-level programming skills. The rest don't stand a chance.

At first there were pioneers, now you'llfind the number is increasing.


Quite a few African and Middle Eastern students, all postgraduate or studying medicine, are sponsored by their governments and don't have visa issues - their embassy sorts it out for them. That's actually part of my job - we have a lot of cost v. quality constraints and I'm hoping to send a tranche to Poland since the quality is higher than, say, Ukraine and it is a much safer country.


You'll find that's changing rapidly right now. Mostly studenty type jobs, fine for students.

Like in the PRL except they got a better education because they studied in Polish (after a year of very intensive language training).

That's a great idea, however English is the thing now. Polish lessons would help in the studenty jobs market, however most of those sponsored by their home country get an adequate per diem that takes care of day to day needs. The ones who chase work tend to be the self-funding students. There's actually more and more work available however as for students everywhere, there's never quite enough and working in restaurant kitchens etc rarely pays well.

Precisely because the overwhelming majority of these students have their sights set on the UK. Extremely few could be bothered to learn Polish.

Pay attention to the type of students who post here. By far the majority are economic refugees interested in Poland solely as an entry point to the EU and will abscond at the first opportunity. They have paid "consultants" or "agents" to help them get into sham or real schools. Sham schools like the one in Józefów.

A smaller group are those who don't have the means or wherewithal to study in richer countries. Some of these have enough resources to study in Poland without working. The bulk don't, however, and are counting on finding work paid well enough to fund their studies and stay. They have also usually paid "recruiters" who have told them that 1) a diploma from an English-language course in Poland is worth something on the job market in richer countries, which is rarely the case; and 2) part-time work is easy to find. By far the bulk of these will be forced to abandon their studies due to lack of funds or because they figure out that their studies are a waste of time and money.

Exceedingly few are graduate or professional students with stipends or fellowships.

Polish state universities are in on the scam. They offer English-language courses as a way to earn discretionary cash for the university. They have little incentive to provide a quality education. They also run a website that makes it sound as if it is easy for foreign students to find work in Poland. You have to read pretty deep to find the part "unless you are from a third-world country".

These English-language courses are a joke as far as the quality of education and the value of the diploma are concerned, with very few exceptions. Most programs accept anything that breaths. Even the English-language engineering programs are far, far inferior to their counterparts in richer countries, and the degrees are far less saleable. Poland just doesn't have sufficient R&D funding to support quality engineering programs. The same with the English-language medical programs, as potential employers know the drill already.

My advice to serious students stands. Study in a rich country if you can. Study at a good university in your own country if you can't. If you are unable to do either, then studying in Poland is likely to be a waste of time and money, as you will most likely drop out, and even if you stick it through, the degree is likely not to be worth the investment. Unless you are and enterprising top student and take a few years to learn Polish before you arrive.

And you have by no means disproved my statement that by far the majority of third-world students will never earn a single penny during their stay in Poland. "More and more" jobs is a hollow promise when the starting point and ending point are both "practically none".

@DominicB

I wonder if SGH is in on this scam... This is one school that I considered going to in Poland. They have 2 MBA programs - one in Polish and one in English. However, the English one despite being held at SGH campus gives a diploma from University of Montreal upon completion. I couldn't find hardly any info on this school on their website and a link just referred back to the English MBA at SGH.

oferta.sgh.waw.pl/en/MBA/Pages/default.aspx

cemba.pl/admission/tuition-fees

Makes me wonder if this too is bogus... sad that arguably the best business school in PL had to resort to this.

I would think that an MBA from SGH would take you further in Poland than some unknown Canadian school, but I could be wrong... On the other hand, outside of Poland an MBA from a Canadian school will probably take you further than a Polish one... I could be wrong though...

Also that program costs 30k zloty plus $9k usd... not a small sum for poland

No scam. SGH is about as respectable as it gets.

If you're going to be in Warsaw, look at the MBA programme from PAN - depending on what specialism you want to do of course. They have some interesting ones, and I've considered it myself.

Yeah I'm just wondering why there's such a huge cost difference between the English mba and the polish one. Sgh is very respected even during commie times its where a lot of prominent people graduated from or sent their kids to attend.

However I've already decided to attend a us school. Just seems like a safer option even if I did decide to work in poland for a us corp in the future.

A person would have to be pretty much set on living and working in poland forever if they wanted to go to sgh. They'll make great money by polish standards even median salaries for a bachelors from sgh reach 10k zl and up. Unfortunately though it appears that sgh doesn't have an aacsb certification which is usually the international gold standard for b schools. Why they never bothered to get this certification is beyond me. The top eu schools like insead Erasmus oxford etc all have them and even a few polish ones do but I've never heard of them I.e. kozminski university which in guessing is some bogus private school yet they have aacsb and sgh doesn't : /

My cousin is actually looking into studying in England. He found a school he really likes for 9k pounds a year. I predict a phone call in the near future asking me for money....

yes I think that is the standard price these days, assuming your cousin is an EU citizen.
When I went to uni here in the UK, not only was it free, but the govt paid you to go! Mind you only the fairly privileged got the privilege, if you see what I mean. That was British socialism...:)

@rozumiemnic

Yea he's polish. He just finished matura and he applied to 2 programs at wroclaw uni - one for microbiology and the other experimental biology or genetics something like that. Well he didn't get in apparently the acceptance rate was only around 9 10% for those programs (by comparison Harvard b school has an 11 12% acceptance rate). We just had a long argument on whether he should take the toeffl or not but he insists his English matura score is enough. I still think he should take it tho...

That's awesome see society should reward people for getting an education. A bachelors in the us just means you'll at least make 35 40k a year and pay your college debts till your 40. Now if someone gets a starting salary of 45 50k w a bachelors that's considered high. I know some doctors that are nearing retirement and are still paying student loans off. Unfortunately I don't think a system would be sustainable like that in the us anymore. The only people who really get paid anymore to go to school are PhDs because they do research for the uni but its more of a stipend than like a decent salary.

The mbas vary greatly in price in the us. It varies from a low 30k 40k for mba to 70k 90k all the way to 160k. Utter insanity. You can get an online mba of course from a no name school for like 15k but that doesn't really do you much good.

not sure about that, each uni is different. I am TOEFL would help, if he doesnt want to study at Luton Ring Road University...(Brit joke. obviously the reputation of individual universities varies wildly)

Which school does he like?

I honestly don't remember. I know it was in london though. I'm not an admissions advisor or anything but experience tells me based on my own applications to unis in the us that a toefl is required or at least highly recommended for non native English speakers to the more prestigious unis. Ill ask him though next time I talk to him which school(s) he was interested in.

I know that from my moms side a rather well to do uncle sent his two kids to study in england. I mean surely a decent British school will be more recognized and respected than a polish one. They'll probably have a better future or at least high earnings than if they stayed in pl.

yes or one of the CambridgeExams, like Proficiency or at least First Certificate, again depending on the institution.

I just noticed some jobs advertised for students in Warsaw, no Polish language needed. It seemed a bit odd outside term time, however there's evidently a growing need for people to do studenty type jobs.


Yes. Worth mentioning that IELTS is sweeping the world, eclipsing the Cambridge Suite in many places and far more useful than TOEFL which is gered to those who want to go to the US.


Kozminski is decent.


Me too. It was possible then since far fewer people went into higher education then.

@Dirk, the £9,000 figure is standard, there are limits to what universities can charge. Check though that it's the same fee for overseas students - those prices are not regulated.

Could be UberEats or similar. Apparently those "gig" type jobs are going almost exclusively to foreigners.

@jon357

It's 9250 pounds per year to be exact.. However I'm sure that figure will probably At least double once things like housing, books, random fees, food, etc is calculated. I'm not familiar at all w the English uni system but based on my travels and corporate experience i think its safe to say hell probably make more money working in the west w a biology degree than in pl. He stated that bio grads typically don't make much more than 4k at most 5k zloty starting out in pl. I never researched it myself but it sounds about right. Even doctors in hospitals in pl make very little.

However he himself doesn't have the money for it and I guess has to use some 3rd party for a student loan. I urged him to be extremely cautious but ultimately its his future I can give him advice but I can't tell him what to do. Unfortunately his/my grandma and grandpa spoiled him and his mom to the point where working is a foreign concept. Back when they had their health and a ran like 5 businesses they could've paid for all that but not anymore. I already know they're trying to butter me up to give him money. I will help him get a job and teach him how to save and invest but I refuse to be swiety mikolaj.

@delphiandomine
Yes there's an increasing amount of jobs for non polish English speakers - restaurants, hotels, some corporate customer service, etc. You are right though most are the student type jobs though

Sounds right. He should certainly check that it's also the figure for non-residents.


It isn't a cheap country, especially the south-east.


This is true, there are more and more studenty type jobs in Poland for people who don't speak Polish. Yes, they're studenty jobs, yes, studenty jobs are fine for students.