What a fantastic idea has the Polish Ministry of Education come up with! It will finance studies abroad of 100 most talented Polish students. What a grand idea! And it will cover the costs of fees, accommodation, maintenance, travel and insurance. Fantastic, isn't it?
Well, there are two major problems with this. First, a smaller one really, although based on a flawed logic, is that to be released from an obligation to repay you need to either do your PhD in Poland or make social and health security payments here for 5 years during a 10 year period after finished the sponsored studies. I guess the idea behind it was that only by physically attaching somebody to Poland they can 'give back' hat they got, but this is surely not right, you can still work on things that will benefit Poland living elsewhere, paying your social security contributions elsewhere, doing your PhD elsewhere. Secondly, the grant will only be available to students who finished their undergraduate studies in Poland (or 3 years of a 'uniform Master's studies, which largely comes down to the same thing). However, there is much more funding available to Master's students anyway, it's really the undergrads that need financial help. I've had plenty of young people about to finish school asking me how to pay for undergraduate studies, because money is just unavailable. Before I started my course I also worried a lot, but fortunately was lucky enough to get a bursary directly from Oxford. But not everyone is so lucky.
Someone shared this news and one of the comments said that studying abroad is just a whim and Polish government should not sponsor it. Again, two things here. To deal with the government sponsoring it, I think that the British system is superior here: you take a loan and repay it after your studies. Repayments are small . Of course EU students don't get maintenance grants, which makes it difficult to gather money for living, but the same loan system could be potentially established.
However, more importantly, how could you say that wanting to receive top quality education is just a whim? Let's be honest: Polish universities are not the top of the world. They lack funding and are overcrowded. Old-fashioned structures still prevail. So I don't blame people who want to study abroad, I did it myself. I had a choice: I could study everywhere I wanted and I've chosen the best university I could get into. I've never considered it as something fanciful: I invested in my future, so that I can do something good after my studies. I don't collect degrees: quite frankly I cannot wait to stop studying and start qualifying. Education is something natural though. And everyone should have an opportunity to get the best of it. Studies abroad broaden your horizons, and this is not just an empty phrase. From my own experience I can say that those, who spent some time abroad, either studying or working, are generally more open-minded, understanding and sensitive. Not to say that people who don't do it are doomed to be closed-minded, but why not seize an opportunity?
Funny that going on an Erasmus doesn't provoke such heated discussions. And yet we pay for this whim of hundreds of young people, because it is funded through EU contributions. And such exchange is rarely for grand study purposes: it's rather for making friends and seeing another country, which is not bad in itself, but I think if we question financing someone's studies abroad by the government, we should first look into programmes like Erasmus: doing a whole degree abroad is a completely different thing.
You can read about the programme on the government site here (all in Polish, but translation plugins are a blessing!).
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