With the highest private-sector enrolment in Europe, the Polish university system could be a tempting model for Britain's coalition government
After the fall of communism, one aspect of capitalism embraced with fervour in Poland was privatised education. Before the fall of the Berlin Wall there was just one private university, run by the Catholic church. Now more than a third of Poland's students are educated outside the state system.
Around 300 private universities – some small enough to share premises with local schools – educate about 630,000 students a year, the highest private-sector enrolment in Europe. Unlike their fellow students at public universities, they have to pay fees, though both kinds of students are eligible for state-backed loans. And unlike public universities, their institutions do not receive any direct government funding.
It must a tempting model for Britain's coalition government, which has cut funding to universities in England and plans to open up the market to more private providers in the hope that competitive pressure might bring soaring tuition fees down.
Other ex-communist bloc countries have also seen surges in private higher education, but unlike those of its neighbours, some of Poland's private universities have serious academic aspirations. Mainly, private institutions focus on vocational subjects such as economics, management and computer science. But they also have PhD students conducting original research.
Private universities argue that they are quicker to respond to changes in the employment market than the bigger, more bureaucratic public universities. Tischner European University (TEU), which educates 1,100 students in Krakow, has brought in a Chinese language module as part of its English language and literature course.
Spotting niches like this is how private universities can flourish, according to Justyna Wozniakowska, head of TEU's international office: "[We can] be more flexible and think what specialisations are not yet present in the market and might sell."
Wozniakowska argues that private universities, typically small institutions with fewer courses, can tailor their degrees better to the demands of employment.
"What private universities do and what they attract students with, is to give them an exact picture of what they might do after they have finished these studies.
"They get practical knowledge and you will be able to meet business people. The programmes you are doing are designed in collaboration with business. I would say this is the key reason that students [when they] are interviewed give for selecting private schools over a public one."
Despite this business-friendly approach, many Polish employers are still sniffy about the quality of private universities – the suspicion is that students are "buying" their degrees.
Filip-Peter Skora, 26, studying for a master's in international relations at TEU after a bachelor's degree at a public university, disagrees: "The quality is at the same level or higher than public universities. Why? The person who teaches [here] is facing people who have some expectations.
"Our parents thought that everything that is good should be provided by government, so it should be without fees. We are thinking like – hey, if I go to a shop and I buy something, if I pay I can think about quality. For me a fee is a huge effort but I know I'll have quality." Skora pays 3,500 zlotys (£750) a semester with money saved up from part-time jobs.
As a dip in the Polish birthrate shrinks the number of potential students, competition between the private and state sectors is expected to get sharper. Even at Krakow's Jagiellonian University, a public institution which is Poland's oldest university and competes with Warsaw University for the title of the country's best, there is a keen awareness of the challenge.
The public university is far bigger and better known than any private competitor; the Jagiellonian occupies a swath of prime territory in Krakow's elegant city centre; its main administration building is a soaring neo-Gothic pile and it is spending 1bn zlotys of public money on a lavish new science campus. Meanwhile, its private counterpart, the TEU, has a more modest home in two 19th-century townhouses, one of them the former Soviet consulate in Krakow.
Andrzej Mania, the Jagiellonian's vice-rector for educational affairs, is sceptical about the quality of all but a handful of the private universities. But he admits: "Definitely we feel the pressure. We maybe are extremely proud at being so old, big and distinguished a university. We're not afraid in the primitive sense [of private universities].
"But we feel the pressure, especially right now when we have fewer and fewer candidates, we may assume that for some of these candidates it's not important to go to the best school but just a school. It's easier to get acceptance in a private school than in our school."
The rivalry between the sectors may increase if Poland's private universities prove successful in an attempt to win subsidies from the state. They are also lobbying for the introduction of tuition fees in the public sector, in a bid to "level the playing field", according to an academic familiar with the sector.
The threat from private universities creates a useful ally in internal struggles at public universities, Mania says – it helps senior managers prod reluctant colleagues to try new things.
Unlike in Germany, where some private universities have a strong focus on research, Poland's public universities remain the country's reservoirs of academic knowledge and research.
Private universities are primarily teaching institutions, with just 1.8% of their income coming from research, according to 2009 figures. Many of them borrow teaching staff from public neighbours, and their offer is likely to remain narrowly focused on business, social sciences and some of the humanities.
At TEU, Wozniakowska said: "We definitely do have an ambition to become a more research-oriented institution. We have done some research but it is not enough. There is a strong push from the university authorities towards the academic staff to get involved in research projects but it's not yet a fully-fledged programme. This is something that is the major challenge for us."
