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Poland is the fourth largest academic center in Europe. Every tenth student in the European Union chooses Polish universities. In the 2013/2014 academic year, over one and a half million people studied with us. This is according to the data of the Polish Information and Foreign Investment Agency.
It’s better, but…
– The last 10 years show that universities are open to expanding their educational offer and adapting it to the requirements imposed by the business world, emphasizes Wiktor Doktór, president of the Pro Progressio Foundation. – New specializations and faculties often arise as a result of tripartite cooperation of universities, local governments and private enterprises, i.e. golden triangle. One of the industries that has the strongest impact on changes in Polish universities is the outsourcing and modern business services sector, which records a dozen or so percent year-on-year growth.
Cooperation is welcome
Cooperation between local authorities, universities and enterprises has a positive effect on the development of the labor market. You can envy Poznań. Here the unemployment rate in September (latest official data) was 2.5 percent. This is the lowest unemployment rate in Poland. Sopot and Wrocław can boast a 3.5% rate. In Warsaw, it is 3.7 percent. The top five in the ranking of the lowest unemployment rate in cities is closed by Katowice (3.9 percent).
Young unemployed
Meanwhile, dozens of young unemployed people, especially graduates, register a day in most poviat labor offices in the country. It happens in some intermediaries that every third registered person is a person who is under 30 years old and has never worked before.
What do you say ?: Graduates of vocational schools will find a job the fastest
Deficit of professionals
What does this result from? Mainly due to the mismatch between the labor market and the employee. Entrepreneurs develop their companies and want to hire more people. Bosses have no problem finding an employee. However, they have a problem with finding the right employee, i.e. a specialist in a given profession, with specific qualifications, skills and predispositions. Research by the Polish Agency for Enterprise Development shows that even three out of four employers have trouble finding a suitable employee.
Assault on high school
About 20 years ago there was a storm on high schools. It happened that 10 candidates each applied for one place in a reputable high school. In basic vocational schools, for example, only every other planned class was started because there were no applicants. There was a similar situation in technicians.
Promotion of vocational education
Times have changed and so have the preferences of young people. Now many Polish communes promote vocational education. More and more communes provide a career counselor already in junior high school. This is because – as officials from the town hall education departments say – not to educate the unemployed later. It often happened years ago that a high school graduate did not enter or interrupted studies and remained without a profession for years. And without a profession, both then and today it is difficult to find a permanent job.
The idea is to encourage a lower secondary school graduate to choose a school that teaches an occupation, but does not pursue a profession. Basic professions and technology sometimes introduce theoretical classes and apprenticeships in companies cooperating with these schools in the first grades. The result is that in some schools even more than 80 percent of students, even later graduates, find employment in this company.
Theory and practice
The level of education is also a problem. For over a dozen years, we have been observing a dynamic development of private schools, in which theory is not combined with practice, because the assessment on the graduate’s diploma of such a school has nothing to do with his real skills. Even when the employer accepts such a graduate, he will quickly verify his skills and thank him.
Real life
It is absurd, but true, that a graduate of a basic vocational school (e.g. hairdresser, salesman, mechanic, varnishman, carpenter) will usually find a job faster than a graduate of humanities, e.g. pedagogy, psychology, sociology or political science. The market has been overloading the latter for over 10 years.
There is a second aspect: if the employer has a choice of two candidates in the same profession and with the same qualifications, one after technical secondary school and the other after studies, he will choose a technical secondary school graduate. This is because the employee would have to pay more to do the same job.
Future directions
Students and graduates of science studies are in a better situation. Logistics, construction, mechanics, mechatronics, IT are the directions of the future. It is almost certain that a graduate of such a faculty will find a job, not for the lowest national position.
Read also: Philology graduates in demand on the labor market
It will be easier for a graduate to find a job right after studies (or during the course of studies), if they decide to study in the ordered field. This is a list of fields of study prepared by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education. It concerns sciences whose graduates are to find a well-paid job in reputable companies. More and more Polish universities, both state and non-state, offer them. For example, at the University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn, the ordered fields of study are construction, IT, environmental protection as well as chemical and process engineering. The AGH University of Science and Technology offers, among others specializations commissioned for students of chemical physics, technical physics, construction and environmental engineering. In the case of the University of Gdańsk, the ordered fields of study include, for example, biotechnology, computer science and mathematics. It often happens that 100% of graduates get a job if, of course, they want to work.
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