Wednesday 13th May: Poznan Day 1

Sorry for the delay, you will see that we have been rather busy!

We visited the largest private higher education provider in Poland: TEB Akademia and its WSB University in Poznan. The TEB Akademia Group has around 50,000 students over 9 campuses in western Poland, and very recently one of its campuses gained PhD awarding powers in the area of finance. Very few of the private providers have this.

The first half of the day comprised of three talks and discussion with members of the management team on:

• The structure of the private HEIs and their governance
• The TEB Holding Corporation as a case study
• Higher education enrolment in Poland 

After lunch we visited and met managers and the Rector of the WSB University in Poznan. The talks and discussion covered three areas:

• The history of Polish Private Sector HE
• Quality Assurance
• Course offerings, industry links and careers services

They were also (rightly) proud of their recent accrediation by the AACSB in the US.

 

This was then followed by a tour of some of their buildings and facilities. Mala is behind the camera this time...

As always, here are three things that the team found especially interesting during the day’s visits.

• The private sector shows a very high level of maturity in the use of data and market intelligence to inform strategy and marketing activities, comparable to best practices in UK HEIs.
• The management and ownership structures of the private HEIs vary widely; some are even family owned.
• Polish ‘part time’ students study at weekends and yet manage to compete a Bachelors (first cycle) degree in three years, usually while working full time.

In the evening we enjoyed the hospitality of our hosts and were shown round the old town of Poznan.