Graduates’ Tracking with Administrative Data – How it is Done in Poland Miko ł aj Jasi ń ski, University of Warsaw (mikolaj.jasinski@uw.edu.pl) Marek Bo ż ykowski, University of Warsaw (mbozykowski@uw.edu.pl) Agnieszka Ch ł o ń -Domi ń czak, Warsaw School of Economics (achlon@sgh.waw.pl) Tomasz Zaj ą c, University of Warsaw (t.zajac@uw.edu.pl) Abstract The massification of higher education in Poland means that labour market outcomes of graduates are an important perspective for future students, higher education institutions as well as the managers of higher education at national level. The Polish Graduate Tracking System, based on the administrative data, allows for monitoring of graduates’ outcomes on the labour market by type of studies, the higher education institution as well as individual curricula. The absolute and relative measures allow assessing the outcomes taking into account the local labour market perspective. Results of the first two waves of graduate tracking show that the outcomes vary by study area, but also change in time. While in the short run, aspects such as prior experience on the labour market and the place of residence affect employment chances, in the longer run the labour market processes become more important. 1
In Intr troducti tion The Polish Graduate Tracking System (ELA system) was introduced in 2014 by the rule of the Law on Higher Education. This followed the need to have better knowledge on the graduates’ transition from school to work in Poland. In the past years, Poland has undergone significant changes of its educational system, including higher education. At the beginning of the 1990s, only about 10% of the most talented youth completing upper secondary school were admitted to university each year and the Polish education institutions were considered elitist. Today, over half of each year’s upper secondary school graduating class pursues higher education studies, and the net enrolment ratio reached around 40% in the middle of 2000s and stayed at that level since then. (Central Statistical Office (GUS) 2015). The ‘massification’ of higher education induced in recent years a vivid public debate pointing out the need to assess the quality of ever more accessible tertiary education. The increase in academic enrolment was accompanied by significant changes in the entire system of higher education in Poland. Until 1990, all higher education institutions were state- owned, but in 1990 a new Law on Higher Education allowed creation of private higher education institutions and introduction of paid part-time study programmes at public schools. This led to the increase in the total number of students, in particular in part-time courses at private institutions. This trend started reversing in early 2000s. Since 2002, the proportion of full-time students at public institution has been gradually increasing again, as a result of, among others, demographic processes and decline in the total number of students (Ministerstwo Nauki i Szkolnictwa Wy ż szego 2013). The ELA system introduced in Poland allows for monitoring of the economic outcomes of higher education understood as employment and earnings of graduates. In the paper, we present the design of the ELA system as well as its results, after the first two waves of the monitoring. The paper is structured as follows. In the first section, we briefly present the education system in Poland, including the developments in the higher education area and overall situation of the graduates of higher education institutions in the labour market. In the second section, we describe the main features of the graduate tracking system, which uses administrative data from two main registers: higher education register which includes the information on individual graduates, provided by all higher education institutions and the social insurance register, containing information on employment and wages of individuals. In the third section, we present the main results of the monitoring, including the absolute and relative indicators used for assessment of the economic situation of graduates. This is followed by the section on a probit model focusing on the characteristics affecting the employment and wages after graduation. In the analysis, we focus on the graduates from second cycle or master courses who finished education in 2014. This choice is motivated by the fact that the vast majority of the first cycle graduates continue their education and do not intend to become economically active yet. Section five presents the main conclusions related to the up-to-date experiences of tracing graduates in Poland. 2
1. 1. Educat Education n sys ystem in n Po Poland and and and its out utco comes bas based d on n th the labour r mark rket t indicato tors rs The education system in Poland comprises of several stages. The first stage is the 9-year general education in primary schools (6 years) and lower secondary schools (3 years). From September 2017, it will be gradually replaced with the 8-year primary education. The second stage is the upper secondary education, that lasts from 2 to 4 years, depending on the type of the upper secondary school. From September 2017, the secondary education will last from 3 to 5 years. School leavers from general upper secondary schools ( licea ogólnokszta ł c ą ce ) and technical upper secondary schools ( technika ), after passing external maturity examination, can access higher education institutions, which is shown in Figure 1. Figure 1. Education system in Poland Source: National Center on Education and the Economy (http://ncee.org) 3
The system of higher education in Poland is regulated by the Act – Law on Higher Education of 27 July 2015, as amended. According to this act, higher education is provided by public and private institutions established for this purpose in the manner prescribed by law. Institutions providing public full-time curricula receive funding from the state budget. Part- time studies are financed from tuition paid by students. Higher education is organised, according to the Bologna framework as follows: first cycle, second cycle, long cycle master’s degree studies, doctoral studies, and postgraduate studies. Graduates can obtain the following diplomas (Marciniak et al. 2013): 1. Studies corresponding to the Bologna first cycle (BA): • a diploma certifying the professional title of licentiate ( licencjat ), • a diploma certifying the professional title of engineer ( in ż ynier ), • a diploma certifying the professional title equivalent to licentiate or engineer (for example engineer in fire prevention, licentiate in midwifery). 2. Studies corresponding to the Bologna second cycle (MA): • a diploma certifying the professional title of master ( magister ), • a diploma certifying the professional title of master engineer ( magister in ż ynier ), • a diploma certifying the professional title of equivalent to master (for example, the title of physician) 3. Doctoral studies • A diploma certifying the title of doctor in a specific academic discipline or doctor of arts in a specific discipline of fine arts. 4. Certificates of completion of postgraduate studies. The shape of the Polish higher education system is affected on the one hand, by demographic and social processes, related to the increased demand for the higher education and by the higher education policies on the other hand. The increased aspirations of young Poles were the most important social development driving the changes in the higher education. As it was mentioned in the introduction, an increased share of secondary school leavers enrolling into higher education programmes. Following this trend, the number of students in higher education institutions increased rapidly from about 400,000 in early 1990s to reach a peak in 2006 at the level of 1.93 million people. After 2006, the number of students started to fall, following the demographic changes. Namely, the fertility level in Poland dropped from above to 2.0 in early 1990s to 1.6 in 1995 and below 1.4 from 1999 (Kotowska 2014). As a result, the number of people in age group 19-23 years started to gradually decline and the number of students in 2016 dropped to 1.35 million with stable enrolment levels. The current number of students is still more than 4 times larger compared to the early 1990s. The increase of students from early 1990s led to the increased supply of the studies offered by newly emerging private higher education institutions. In 2008, the share of students in private higher education institutions was 34.5%, while the share of students in tuition-free, 4
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