Private Learning
Although Poland has three times more non-public universities than public ones, only a handful of them are engaged in academic research. Dziennik Polski writes that most private institutions of higher education are chiefly focused on the admission of students and opening new faculties. According to data from the Polish higher education ministry, the percentage of doktor (doctorate) and doktor habilitowany (post-doctoral) degrees in non-public universities accounts for only 2.5% of all the degrees awarded in the country. Likewise, the publications produced in private schools of higher education constitute only 1.78% of the total amount of Polish scientific works; the situation is even worse in the case of citations in international scientific journals – 0.64 percent of total items cited. “Most non-public universities are interested in teaching alone. Consequently, research activity for them is secondary,” says Magdalena Maciejewska from the Department of Scientific Policy Instruments, the Ministry of Science and Higher Education (MNiSW). Over the last two years, the ministry has launched six competitions for research grants. Public higher education institutions submitted nearly 21,000 applications, a sharp contrast to the mere 1.7 percent figure of applications submitted by non-public universities.
Rzeczpospolita
