What do you study? Higher education in Poland

It has been recently observed that the number of young Poles who choose some form of tertiary education has dropped in recent years - nowadays it seems no longer necessary to be a university graduate in order to have a chance for a profitable career. Nonetheless, high education in Poland still remains hugely popular and according to Eurostat, the country has one of the biggest student populations in Europe - with 1.6 million students in 2016, Poland took sixth place in the European Union, behind Germany, France, the UK, Spain and Italy. A lot of high school graduates opt for the academic path, which is all the easier in Poland as full-time studies at public universities are free of charge. Which universities do Poles choose then?

Last year, the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education ranked the most popular universities in Poland, by number of applications:

1. University of Warsaw
2. Warsaw University of Technology
3. Jagiellonian University in Kraków
4. Gdańsk University of Technology

When it comes to the most popular fields of study, humanities seem to have given way to IT, engineering or business majors in the last few years:

• information technology
• management
• psychology
• economics
• law
• accounting and finance
• automatics and robotics
• civil engineering
• pedagogy
• logistics

At the same time, faculties such as pharmaceutical engineering, data science and chemistry and forensic toxicology are the hardest to get into. Future students of these fields need to score better than 17 other candidates during the recruitment process.

Foreign students

Students from abroad are increasingly interested in Polish universities. At the moment, there are about 72 000 foreign students in Poland - two times more than just five years ago. Most of them come from neighbouring countries - Ukraine and Belarus, but a noticeable rise in students from India and Scandinavian countries (Norway and Sweden) has also been observed. Foreigners frequently choose courses at the University of Warsaw and tend to major in international relations, management or accounting and finance. Scandinavians also often apply for studies at medical universities.

Sources:

Eurostat

Ministerstwo Nauki i Szkolnictwa Wyższego

Uniwersytet Warszawski

Study in Poland