According to the daily, the Polish student visa system has been bombarded with requests since 2014, and has become viewed as an easy ticket to enter Europe.
In the last decade, 321,000 foreign students came to Poland from nearly 200 countries. To date, just 118,371 have graduated.
Furthermore, around half of those who decide to study in Poland never reach the second year of study.
The results of a government audit of the visa system of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Internal Affairs have found that foreigners are “abusing the too-easy recruitment to study in Poland, and their real purpose of entry is to work or emigrate to other Schengen countries.”
Data from the Ministry of Science and Higher Education acquired by Rzeczpospolita found there are currently 98,056 foreign students studying in the country. However, the 2023/2024 academic year began with 103,147, so more than 5,000 students vanished from the system after the first semester.
Back in 2014, there were more than 41,000 foreign students, and their number has grown exponentially, doubling in 2020.
This number is currently at its highest point, with more than 45,000 students from Ukraine, 12,400 from Belarus, over 4,000 each from Zimbabwe and Turkey, over 3,000 from India, and 1,100 from Russia.
The government audit on the abuse of the visa system showed that of the group starting their first year of study, only 59% (2018) and 53% (2022) reached the second year.
Private universities under scrutiny
The largest number of foreign students (data for 2022) are educated at the Academy of Applied Sciences in Lublin (72%), and Vistula University in Warsaw (56.5%).
Natalia Żyto, spokeswoman for the Ministry of Science, noted that students from abroad are attracted to Poland mainly by private universities.
“They [non-public universities] do not receive funds from the state budget for the maintenance and development of teaching potential, including the education of foreigners. So a foreign student pays tuition fees, but no one from the outside really controls whether the student even shows up for classes,” Żyto said.
She added that it is only the university rectors who “supervise the course of education.”
Rules about to change
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs states that “a student visa is a national visa issued for a maximum of 365 days,” and students apply for the right to stay in Poland.
European Parliament directives dictate that a member state may require proof of sufficient knowledge of the language in which the studies are to take place. Poland does not impose these requirements on foreign students.
Students must simply show that they have paid for their studies (which can be as short as one semester) and have a certificate of enrollment.
However, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Internal Affairs are proposing policies that would eliminate such abuses of the system. This includes the introduction of a ban on the admission of foreigners to universities that do not meet the minimum recruitment criteria.
The pre-selection process for foreign candidates for university admission (as in Germany) is to be centralized and conducted by a single institution, such as the National Agency for Academic Exchange (NAWA).
NAWA is responsible for verifying high school diplomas and confirming that a candidate knows the language of instruction and meets other minimum criteria for entering higher education in Poland.
The ministries are also “considering restricting foreign students” access to the Polish labor market, as well as increasing the minimum funds required of foreign students in the process of applying for a visa and residence card.
They also intend to make it mandatory to have an account with a higher minimum amount of funds. Currently, that figure is just 1,270 zlotys (€295) for the first two months of the planned stay.
