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It looks like I took a bullet for the team. That quarter-page ad for a college that guaranteed an MA degree in two years was a cunning Gazeta Wyborcza hoax. They say the interest generated by the ad was enormous, with people from all corners of Poland. I’m not exactly sure what GW thinks this proves. That employers have an obsession with certificates and papers (supposedly a thing of the communist past)? But everyone knew about that. It seems strange that GW, such an outward looking, western-orientated newspaper, needed to enlist the help of half of Poland to find out about the existence of qualification inflation, which has been known about for years in the West. If they can’t read English in there, well any young Pole looking for work could have told them about it. In fact, Gazeta Wyborcza itself carried a story about how Poznań was looking for a public toilet manager with a university education and several years’ experience.

Saturday’s paper prints reader reactions to the big campaign and it is fair to say that this battle the newspaper decisively lost. One student, for example, wonders why she is supposed to feel ashamed or inferior for writing her MA thesis (on Warsaw) in Polish. Enough. No doubt the war on free education will be won with or without the GW’s fifth column.

Gazeta Wyborcza sent in the foreign legion today in a lack lustre affair which could hardly be described as a decisive victory. They found a handful of obliging foreign students to complain about Poland. One said that the backup facilities in Poland were much worse than in Portugal, “doubtless because Poland values education very lowly and funds it accordingly.” No, of course that wasn’t printed. She said “doubtless because in Portugal public universities are fee-paying – 900 euros a year.” The newspaper also committed a tactical blunder by admitting in an accompanying interview that some third level colleges (for example, the one from which the interviewer, Piotr Pacewicz, graduated 30 years or so ago) are alright, having introduced paid night courses a few years ago. (I need hardly point out that Pacewicz got his degree for free. I would add that he got it free from the communists - except that it is now a crime in Poland to praise communism.)

Gazeta Wyborcza launched its latest offensive – and it is often quite offensive – on Polish lecturers on Monday, Oct 19^th in the year of Our Lord 2009 with a big splash on the results of a survey which showed, among other things, that university lecturers think university lecturers are capable and clever and – more surprisingly – their students also think them capable and clever. So, everything okay then? Everyone happy? No! Gazeta Wyborcza is certainly not, interpreting the results as evidence of complacency (and entitling their campaign “The Higher School of Shame”) because Polish lecturers, their universities and their courses are in fact rubbish. Fact always trumps opinion. Facing the page bearing the report (headlined “We, wonderful lecturers in our super colleges” – oh, the irony) are two interviews, one with the minister for science and higher education (former rector of a private university), and one with the rector of Collegium Civitas (a private university). The businessman uses the opportunity to sing the praises of private universities and fee-paying students.

(Gazeta Wyborcza also saw fit to print a comment from its internet forum from one kociewak2, a law student here in Gdańsk, who claims that in England professors are available 24 hours a day. A few of my friends are professors in England but when I rang them this morning at 3 am they were unavailable for a comment.)

Monday’s paper contains a quarter page ad for a private college which offers – nay, guarantees – an MA degree (“magister”) in two years if you have finished school. Presumably – though it’s not mentioned – you also need a BA degree since it takes five (5) years to earn (not buy, with a money-back guarantee) an MA in Poland. There is also an ad for a competition organized by something called the Future Academy. That might be a third level institution, who knows? There are no ads in the paper from taxpayer-funded universities.

The campaign against free education continues in Tuesday’s paper, which reports that the Conference of Rectors of Higher Academic Schools demanded of the minister the right of public universities to charge fees if private universities are to be funded by the state.

Klaus Bachmann, a Political Science professor, writes in the same paper an article about the need to reform higher education. He has some good points to make and seems a very little less enthusiastic about denying university education to the poor but – this is Poland after all… One of the present system’s weaknesses is that lecturers in the humanities are cut off from the outside world: they read only Polish books and lecture only in Polish. Perhaps they should lecture in Swahili? No, of course not. They should lecture in English to Polish students about Polish literature (this already happens: there a bonus is paid for lecturing in English). I can see, of course, how widening one’s reading to non-Polish books would increase a Polish prof’s knowledge but how would lecturing in English – with all the attendant misunderstandings, hesitations and repetitions – help?

Doctorates and post-doctorates (“habilitacje”) should of course, Bachmann continues, be written in English so that foreigners can review them since Poles can’t be trusted. Research should be published in other countries, in other languages (sometimes Bachamnn remembers the existence of languages other than English, sometimes not, as when he suggests linking pay to the number of one’s English-language publications). I can imagine the editors of Western academic periodicals eagerly awaiting a deluge of submissions on the demographic history of Pcim, based on Parish records, 1718–1767. Harvard is just dying to sink its teeth into minor Polish writers whose works cannot even be bought in Poland.

One of his ideas – as usual, something that’s been knocking around the west for years – is “putting elite [Polish intellectuals’ second favourite word, after “prestigious”] research centres beyond the reach of universities” because they (universities) are “incapable of guaranteeing high quality.” This is already happening in Germany, where such “elite research centres” are funded by private foundations. I can suggest a snappier name for “elite research centres”: why not call them “universities”? Since they are funded by private foundations: “Private Universities.”

For such a gung-ho westerner, Bachmann seems to have ignored a fundamental piece of advice given to American university students: do not use false dichotomies in your essays. Here he goes:

• Are universities to be skansens ruled by old profs, or competitive institutes where no one has job security? (Believe it or not, he is clearly in favour of chronic insecurity in his profession.)
• Are universities to be financed from teaching (govt. subsidy plus fees) or from research results?
• Is the model Polish academic a textbook writer or a project manager?

Wednesday’s pitched battle against lecturers is a little less ideological. Plagiarism is condemned and the merits of professional, non-academic education are talked up. But – this is Poland after all… The minister has ordered a higher education strategy to 2020 – not from her civil servants, good God, they wouldn’t have a clue – but from a consortium comprised of famed educationalists Ernst & Young and world-renowned teachers, The Market Economics Research Institute. “The experts … admit that fees cannot be avoided. Students are opposed to fees.” So are lecturers, as GW’s own opinion poll shows. Being a journalist must be so exciting – always finding out new and surprising things, like Ernst & Young are against free education, while students are for it. The pope wears a funny hat and bears don’t use public toilets…

If there’s one thing you Polish profs have to get through your goddamned heads it’s Speak English or Die.

If there’s one thing you Polish students have to get through your goddamned heads it’s Pay Up or Shut Up.

I hold in my hand a circular concerning the Poland-wide “English Olympics,” a competition they hold every year to reward exceptionally good schoolchildren. As far as I know, these Olympics are held in all subjects, not just English. It’s not a terribly exciting document. It gives the closing dates for various stages – school, regional and nationwide – and directs the reader to http://www.ifa.amu.edu.pl/fa/oja for more information. But there’s a nice touch at the end of the circular, which is a message from the Ministry of Education, reading:

Uwaga! Ministerstwo Edukacji Narodowej zastrzegło sobie prawo do rozwiązania umowy na realizację olimpiad przedmiotowych w przypadku braku środków na sfinansowanie realizacji zadania w roku 2010.

Loosely translated this means: “Go ahead kids. Knock yourselves out. Maybe we’ll give you a prize and then again maybe we won’t. There’s a crisis on.”

I came across this in an e-mail circular that circulated so much it’s hard to tell exactly who wrote it. It seems to be from either the Dean of Graduate Studies or the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultural Studies in Trinity College Dublin, the oldest university in the known universe:

“… all guidelines are mandatory… Theses’ must meet ALL of the requirements and guidelines.”

sic

After the revelations about the government’s plans to privatise higher education there was a storm of debate on the pages of Gazeta Wyborcza – no, not about education, about something called the Hausner plan. Unless I miss my guess this is the second plan to be named after this Hausner person.  This one concerns public funding of the arts, or to be more precise, cutting public funding of the arts. Surprisingly enough, the government wants to hand over arts funding to the private sector. Corporations are to be allowed write off 1% of blah blah blah. GW has had articles on it every day and every day they printed a summary of the plan’s main points, as if you couldn’t guess to within 99.9% accuracy what a plan dreamed up under the auspices of a right wing neoliberal government consisted of.

Now I think puppet theatres and poetry and what-have-you are important but I am amazed at the complete lack of interest in Kazimierz Stępień’s expressed desire to remove the constitutional guarantee of free study. Propose getting rid of the requirement to do a post-doctoral degree and there is an uproar. Propose cutting poor people out of third level education and nothing.

The other thing that has been occupying the mainstream media of late is who gets to be called boss of the European Parliament – Jerzy Buzek or some Italian guy. We’re all supposed to be glued to our seats with our fingers crossed for Buzek even though we’re constantly told that the EU is about partnership and putting the interests of the community above the interests of individual nations. That’s all very well, it seems, but wouldn’t it be nice if Our Lads got some nice (”prestigious”) jobs out of it? At the risk of being drawn into the pointlessness of it all, here is some background information on Jerzy Buzek: he was not a very good prime minister of Poland for a few years, during which time one Marian Krzaklewski, trade union leader, was the power behind the throne. Krzaklewski also ran for the European Parliament but didn’t get in. Well it looks like he may soon get his old back seat back.

Yesterday Gazeta Wyborcza announced plans by the government to stop paying for students to do two degrees – one’s your limit. Today’s paper lets the cat well and truly out of the bag. There’s an interview with professor Kazimierz Stępień, chairman of the Rada Nauki (Education Council, more or less) at the Ministry for Privatising Education. He says quite openly (that is to say: he doesn’t hide behind childish arguments like “free education is a myth,” a headline in last week’s newspaper) that the constitutional guarantee of free studies should be abolished (“konstytucyjny zapis o bezpłatnych studiach powinien być zniesiony”). But wait – what’s this – oh he does go for the childish argument: “Studiów bezpłatnych nie ma, ponieważ płaci za nie całe społeczeństwo” (There is no such thing as free education because society as a whole pays for it). It’s depressing that such a weak argument can be made (and made repeatedly) in serious newspapers. Aside from the government’s desire to exclude poor people from university education, there is the question of when Gazeta Wyborcza is going to wise up to all this. It’s quite alright to have ago at the poor, the sick, the old and the working classes but university educated people…? They’re the ones who buy the newspaper. If you alienate them, who’s going to buy your product?

Another year, another disaster. I mentioned before how the answers to some mock school exams leaked last year, thus giving pupils ideal preparation for the vicissitudes of life. April 2009 rolls around and – yes – exam answers leaked. I don’t know which subject(s), which paper(s), which precise exams (“gymnazjalne”, I think) and also, in a desperate attempt to limit/extend (I can’t tell which) the damage, all sorts of rumours and counter-rumours are swirling around but the details don’t really matter. The pupils have learned the most important lesson of all: don’t trust adults, particularly not those involved in educating you.

It’s a lesson their teachers should take to heart as well. The following is based on hearsay, so treat with caution: a school teacher friend of mine did a special course in marking the new “gimnazjalne” exams but sometime after he took the course (but before the exams were set) the higher-ups decided to put back the introduction of the new exams two years. For the time being they will take the form of multiple-choice questions, which a computer, or even a department of education specialist can do. It’s not a story I would be interested in following but if I were I would bet that in two years my teacher friend will be required to re-do the special training course.

While still in school I and most of the other children realised that cog notes (okay, “crib” notes if you must) were not really much help even if it was common to brag about how much writing you could fit on the back of your tie. You can write “Famine: 1845-1849, million dead” on the ball of your thumb but that’s not going to be much use to you if the question is “To what extent can the famine of 1845 to 1849 and the ensuing deaths of a million Irish people be blamed on the laissez faire economic policy of the English?”

Yet in Poland we have a country that could not function without cogging (and its “legitimate” friend, rote-learning). I never could understand how such schoolboyish japes could last the course into the adulthood of modern Poles. Until I came across the official, state Polish as a foreign language exam, that is. Browsing through the grammar section of the most advanced level I came across the following pearls in a gap-filling exercise:

“Last weekend I and a few (friends) went to the (White Eagle). At one of the tables there sat a few (men), among which I recognised two (priest) (acquaintances) and one (judge)…”

I don’t hobnob much with Polish priests and judges (or dukes) and the reason is simple: they are highly irregular nouns. In fact, a brief perusal of the grammar paper shows that irregularities are virtually the only things examined. Elsewhere the correct conjugations of the following verbs are demanded: potłuc, podrzeć, zmiąć, pognieść and wedrzeć się. Every serious student will know and dread these words. The rather rare perfective form of the past participle (I think that’s what it’s called anyway: the –wszy form) is required and another section keeps asking about 15+ children, 9+ pupils and, strangely for Catholic Poland, 3+ parents. Again, all so difficult that real Poles usually avoid these forms, even going so far as to prefer the easily declined “osoby” (persons) to “ludzie” (people). Tell a Pole about the ways of the –oro number forms and watch the eyes glaze over… Another section examines how well you know the multifarious and various prefixes of the verb “paść” (fall – but knowing that is no help at all.)

In short, you could easily pass this part by rote learning or cheating but by merely knowing Polish? Much harder.

In a straight news article it can sometimes be difficult to figure out where the reporter’s sympathies lie but for the careful observer there are a few clues. Take the article in today’s Dziennik about the decision to fund private third level colleges from public funds. The headline reads “Government to finance private colleges” (“Rząd dofinansuje uczelnie prywatne”). How very kind of the government (Donald Tusk and Co.). You can bet if the paper disapproved of this handover of public monies to private business the headline would read “Taxpayer to finance private colleges.” There are clues as to the sympathies of the newspaper within the article too. For instance “…as a result they [private colleges] will be able to reduce their fees” (“Dzięki temu będą mogły obniżyć czesne”). They could use the taxpayers’ money to reduce fees for the students, sure, or they could use it to increase dividends, buy walnut dashboards for the boss’s company car or just about anything really.

Stanisław Mocek, of the private school Collegium Civitas, has a wonderful comment to make on the matter: “…it’s time to end the stereotype of the division into public and non-public colleges and start dividing them into good and bad” (“…czas zerwać ze stereotypem podziału na uczelnie publiczne i niepubliczne, a zacząć je dzielic na dobre i złe.”) A stereotype? There is a difference between public and non-public colleges: the former are public and the latter are not. It’s not a stereotype. It’s a fact, not a terribly complicated one, I would have thought – but I’m not the pro-dean for didactics in a private university.