(Center for Public Policy Research Papers Series, 2013) Kwiek, Marek
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. Based on analysis of micro-level data from the EU-SILC (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.