The 2017-2018 academic year - summary

There were 1,291.9 thousand students in higher education institutions in the 2017/18 academic year i.e. by 4.2% fewer than a year earlier. Since the 2006/07 academic year, a decline in the number of students was recorded, which was influenced by demographic changes (a decrease in the population aged 19-24).

75.1% of all students were enrolled in public schools. Women accounted for 57.8% of all students.

Business and administration, engineering and engineering trades, health as well as social and behavioural sciences were most often chosen narrow fields (in line with ISCED-F 2013 fields of education).

The number of foreign students in Polish higher schools increased in the 2017/18 academic year and stood at 72.7 thousand, i.e. 5.6% of all students. The students from Europe were prevalent – 57.8 thousand persons in total, the most from Ukraine (37.8 thousand students) and Belarus (6.0 thousand students).

In 2017/2018 academic year, 590.5 thousand students learned modern foreign languages in obligatory courses (i.e. 48.4% of all students – excluding foreigners). Their number fell by 6.0% in comparison with the previous year. 91.1% of students learning foreign languages attended only one foreign language course, accounting for 41.7% of the student population. A much smaller percentage of students learned two foreign languages (3.6%).

The number of graduates in the 2016/17 academic year amounted to 387.5 thousand and was higher by 22.9 thousand in comparison with the 2015/16 academic year.

The number of postgraduate students in the 2017/2018 academic year increased by 1.5 thousand in relation to the previous year and reached 159.5 thousand. Female students constituted 72.1% of all postgraduate students.

Doctoral students in higher education institutions and other tertiary education institutions, such as research institutes, scientific units of Polish Academy of Sciences and the Medical Centre of Postgraduate Education amounted to 41.3 thousand, which represented a 4.3% decline on the previous year.

A total of 95.0 thousand academic teachers (counted as full-time equivalent) were employed in higher education institutions as of 31 December 2017, including 2.1 thousand foreigners.