Among foreign students in Poland, Ukrainians and Belarusians make up the largest group, with Norwegians coming in third. In some universities in Poland, foreign students make up over 50 percent of the total student population.
The latest report “Foreigners at Universities in Poland” by the Information Processing Center shows that the ratio of international students in higher education in 2020 was 6.8 percent, and a year later it was 7.1 percent. The number of foreign students increased by 3,400 to 86,000.
In the academic year of 2021/2022, nearly 64 percent of foreign students attended bachelor studies, while another 35 percent choose master programs.
The most numerous are Ukrainians (17.1 percent), Norwegians (11.2 percent), Germans (8.1 percent), Belarusians (7.8 percent), Taiwanese (6.4 percent), Swedes (6.2 percent) and Indians (4.8 percent). Also, 4.4 percent of students in Poland come from Ireland and 3.8 percent from the United States.
Foreign students tend to prefer public universities for their studies, with 38,300 enrolled at such institutions compared to 3,200 at non-public universities. The most popular fields of study among foreign students are management, medical sciences, and computer science.
The Vistula Academy of Finance and Business, the Academy of Higher School of Business, and the Economic-Humanities Academy in Warsaw are the top choices for foreign students studying management. The Vistula Academy is also the most popular destination for foreign students studying computer science, with over half of all students enrolled in this program being from abroad.
The Jagiellonian University in Kraków has the highest number of foreign academic staff, with nearly 2,500 lecturers, mostly from Ukraine (23.1 percent) and Germany.
