Polish universities vying for foreign students
                
                    
                        PR dla Zagranicy
                    
                    
                        John  Beauchamp
                        
                        30.05.2011 12:03
                    
                                 
                
                
                    Estimates predict that the student population in Poland is to drop by one third by 2020, with Poland’s demographic low proving a headache for universities.
                
                
                
                
               
                
                         
With many private as well as publicly run univerisites worrying about falling student numbers, and job losses as a result, academic insititutions are beginning to promote themselves abroad.
“[Polish] universities are trying to make themselves known at educational fairs in various countries,” says Waldemar Siwinski, head of the Education Perspective Foundation, which along with the Conference of Academic Rectors of Polish Schools, has been promoting universities under the “Study in Poland” programme.
The Rzeczpospolita daily reports that apart from advertising in Poland’s eastern neighbours, universities are vying for students from the USA, Canada, as well as China.
There are currently 1.9 million students in Poland, although only a fraction of that number, 17,000, are foreign. (jb)