Early careers of tertiary graduates in Poland: employability, earnings, and differences between public and private higher education

Abstract

Poland's system of higher education has expanded rapidly in the last quarter century. Not all graduates of the massified educational system have succeeded in the labor market. Part of the public debate regarding the labor market performance of graduates focuses on the performance of graduates who attended private institutions and part-time programs. As yet, there has been no detailed research into the career paths of recent university graduates in Poland, let alone a comprehensive investigation of the differences between the performance of graduates of various types of studies. In this paper, we present the newly created Polish Graduate Tracking System. We use data from the system to evaluate the labor market performance of recent graduates and to demonstrate the differences between graduates of public and private education. Overall, the privately educated graduates fare better on the labor market, but a more in-depth analysis shows that this could be attributed to their strategy of early entry into the labor market.