From System Expansion to System Contraction: Access to Higher Education in Poland

Access to higher education in Poland is changing due to the demography of smaller cohorts of potential students. Following a demand-driven educational expansion after the collapse of communism in 1989, the higher education system is now contracting. Such expansion/contraction and growth/decline in European higher education has rarely been researched, and this article can thus provide a possible scenario for what might occur in other European postcommunist countries. On the basis of an analysis of microlevel data from the European Union Survey on Income and Living Conditions, I highlight the consequences of changing demographics for the dilemmas of public funding and admissions criteria in both public and private sectors.