Hitting the Books - Polish business schools train the next century's managers
"We mountaineers are very proud," says founder and rector Krzysztof Pawlowski, a native of Nowy Sacz. "To know that we are the best is very important. One motor here is a real desire to show others what we are capable of."
Very capable, according to the Polish magazine Wprost, which ranked WSB-NLU (the school's Polish initials) No. 1 among private business schools in Poland last May.
Alicja Juszczyk, a recent graduate, says before WSB-NLU there was no place for high school graduates from the Nowy Sacz area to study. "Everybody went to Krakow," she says. "Now people come here from all over Poland." Agnieszka Wojnar, who will graduate this year, says a licencjat (roughly comparable to an American bachelor's degree) from WSB-NLU opens doors in Poland's private sector.
"This school promotes its graduates," she says, "and offers come in from all over Poland. Good firms - from Warsaw, Krakow..."
There may be as many as 630 business schools in Poland, of which only 175 are attached to state institutions of higher education, according to a study by the Task Force for Training and Human Resources, an EU PHARE-funded aid organization. The study, published last year, was conducted by the Center for Economic Studies Development at the prestigious Warsaw School of Economics (SGH). Ewa Chmielecka, who heads the Center, says most Polish business schools, state or private, are worth little, and the explosive growth of for-profit academies has made quality control difficult.
"After private higher education was first allowed [in 1991] things really took off," she says (see diagram). She and her colleagues on the 1993 Task Force study, the first of its kind in Poland, had trouble getting any information at all from some of the more ephemeral private business schools. The country's better schools recently created the Association for Managerial Education "Forum," a voluntary accrediting body that granted its first certificates of accreditation at a ceremony in Warsaw this week.
In the meantime, Chmielecka says, the number of private business schools is still growing, but not as fast as before. "It's not such a big business any more," she says.
The top private business schools, like WSB-NLU, are not primarily profit-making institutions. They are more like foundations set up by civic leaders like Pawlowski (a member of the Polish senate) who understand that Poland needs people trained to thrive in a market economy.
From planners to marketeers
Communist Poland's command economy needed planners rather than market researchers, and Russian rather than English speakers, and the structure of Polish higher education reflected those priorities. More important than either, of course, was political reliability, so the system discouraged original thinking and rewarded conformity.
At the apex of that system was the Warsaw School of Planning and Statistics; as SGH (its original, pre-war name), the school still dominates the market, having transformed itself into a thoroughly western-style economics and business university since 1989.
"Our graduates have no problem finding jobs," says vice-rector Krzysztof Rutkowski. "Usually they have several offers to choose from."
Although the school admits evening students who pay tuition, regular, daytime students pay nothing and even receive a stipend from the state. When they graduate, they can expect to fill the leading positions in government and business in the country. Rutkowski estimates 30%-50% of the leading positions in business are currently occupied by SGH graduates, while in the public sector four members of Poland's current government, including Prime Minister Jozef Oleksy, are SGH graduates who will go back to their teaching positions there if they ever decide to retire from politics.
It's too early to tell how big a bite private business schools will take out of the SGH old boys' (and girls') network. Francois Nail, chairman of Naj International, a personnel recruitment firm active in Poland, says the first graduates of Poland's private business schools are only now beginning to make their marks in the business world.
"My strategy is definitely based on the idea that Poland's future managers are being trained in Poland right now," he says. "But I'm doing most of my business with people I started tracking four years ago."
Best and brightest
Nail says the best asset Polish business schools have is their cost-effectiveness: in Poland, quality costs less. Their greatest weakness, he suggests, may be their failure to provide their students with enough career guidance.
"Some students are brilliant and quickly find their place," he says. "Others have good skills but don't know where to apply them. He says students need help finding the right career path so they don't lose time and energy making the wrong moves after graduation.
SGH's Rutkowski says his school "must establish something like this," adding that most students are guided informally by their thesis advisors and other professors. Private schools try to provide guidance, but lack resources.
After graduation, Rutkowski says, SGH diploma-holders can expect to win monthly starting salaries ranging from $400-600 for good students to $1000-1200 for the best students. The average monthly salary in Poland is less than $300.
It's hard to say what private business school graduates earn: those with degrees from reputable schools probably find good salaries; those with degrees from fly-by-night academies probably don't. WSB-NLU's Pawlowski says one of his top students from last year's graduating class just started at $1200, which would be competitive with the SGH's best and brightest.
Moonlighting professors
The quality of instruction at Poland's better private business schools is comparable to that available at state institutions, too, principally because it is delivered by instructors from state schools seeking to supplement their meager paychecks. "State schools can pay only officially-approved salaries," says researcher Chmielecka. "And professors can't survive on them." She estimates 80%-90% of profs have a second job, often in a private business school.
Chmielecka says this isn't necessarily bad. "Professors share their theoretical knowledge with their private-school students and bring back practical knowledge to their state-school ones," she says. Professors keep their state-school jobs for the prestige: "Every young economist wants a business card with 'SGH' on it," says SGH's Rutkowski.
"The problem starts when professors have so much outside work that they neglect their professorial responsibilities," Chmielecka says.
State or private, Polish business educators agree that Polish business schools need help from foreign academic institutions and close cooperation with companies. WSB-NLU began life as the Sadecko-Podhalanska School of Business with 64 students, volunteer teachers and no curriculum. The Polish consul in Chicago knew that National Louis University, a private university in Evanston, Illinois, was looking for a partner in Poland, and provided the initial contact. Now NLU supplies a full curriculum, and graduates of the hybrid school receive a degree recognized in the US.
What's in it for the foreign partner? "Prestige," Pawlowski answers. "NLU's name is heard around Washington now, perhaps for the first time, because of its activities here."
Very capable, according to the Polish magazine Wprost, which ranked WSB-NLU (the school's Polish initials) No. 1 among private business schools in Poland last May.
Alicja Juszczyk, a recent graduate, says before WSB-NLU there was no place for high school graduates from the Nowy Sacz area to study. "Everybody went to Krakow," she says. "Now people come here from all over Poland." Agnieszka Wojnar, who will graduate this year, says a licencjat (roughly comparable to an American bachelor's degree) from WSB-NLU opens doors in Poland's private sector.
"This school promotes its graduates," she says, "and offers come in from all over Poland. Good firms - from Warsaw, Krakow..."
There may be as many as 630 business schools in Poland, of which only 175 are attached to state institutions of higher education, according to a study by the Task Force for Training and Human Resources, an EU PHARE-funded aid organization. The study, published last year, was conducted by the Center for Economic Studies Development at the prestigious Warsaw School of Economics (SGH). Ewa Chmielecka, who heads the Center, says most Polish business schools, state or private, are worth little, and the explosive growth of for-profit academies has made quality control difficult.
"After private higher education was first allowed [in 1991] things really took off," she says (see diagram). She and her colleagues on the 1993 Task Force study, the first of its kind in Poland, had trouble getting any information at all from some of the more ephemeral private business schools. The country's better schools recently created the Association for Managerial Education "Forum," a voluntary accrediting body that granted its first certificates of accreditation at a ceremony in Warsaw this week.
In the meantime, Chmielecka says, the number of private business schools is still growing, but not as fast as before. "It's not such a big business any more," she says.
The top private business schools, like WSB-NLU, are not primarily profit-making institutions. They are more like foundations set up by civic leaders like Pawlowski (a member of the Polish senate) who understand that Poland needs people trained to thrive in a market economy.
From planners to marketeers
Communist Poland's command economy needed planners rather than market researchers, and Russian rather than English speakers, and the structure of Polish higher education reflected those priorities. More important than either, of course, was political reliability, so the system discouraged original thinking and rewarded conformity.
At the apex of that system was the Warsaw School of Planning and Statistics; as SGH (its original, pre-war name), the school still dominates the market, having transformed itself into a thoroughly western-style economics and business university since 1989.
"Our graduates have no problem finding jobs," says vice-rector Krzysztof Rutkowski. "Usually they have several offers to choose from."
Although the school admits evening students who pay tuition, regular, daytime students pay nothing and even receive a stipend from the state. When they graduate, they can expect to fill the leading positions in government and business in the country. Rutkowski estimates 30%-50% of the leading positions in business are currently occupied by SGH graduates, while in the public sector four members of Poland's current government, including Prime Minister Jozef Oleksy, are SGH graduates who will go back to their teaching positions there if they ever decide to retire from politics.
It's too early to tell how big a bite private business schools will take out of the SGH old boys' (and girls') network. Francois Nail, chairman of Naj International, a personnel recruitment firm active in Poland, says the first graduates of Poland's private business schools are only now beginning to make their marks in the business world.
"My strategy is definitely based on the idea that Poland's future managers are being trained in Poland right now," he says. "But I'm doing most of my business with people I started tracking four years ago."
Best and brightest
Nail says the best asset Polish business schools have is their cost-effectiveness: in Poland, quality costs less. Their greatest weakness, he suggests, may be their failure to provide their students with enough career guidance.
"Some students are brilliant and quickly find their place," he says. "Others have good skills but don't know where to apply them. He says students need help finding the right career path so they don't lose time and energy making the wrong moves after graduation.
SGH's Rutkowski says his school "must establish something like this," adding that most students are guided informally by their thesis advisors and other professors. Private schools try to provide guidance, but lack resources.
After graduation, Rutkowski says, SGH diploma-holders can expect to win monthly starting salaries ranging from $400-600 for good students to $1000-1200 for the best students. The average monthly salary in Poland is less than $300.
It's hard to say what private business school graduates earn: those with degrees from reputable schools probably find good salaries; those with degrees from fly-by-night academies probably don't. WSB-NLU's Pawlowski says one of his top students from last year's graduating class just started at $1200, which would be competitive with the SGH's best and brightest.
Moonlighting professors
The quality of instruction at Poland's better private business schools is comparable to that available at state institutions, too, principally because it is delivered by instructors from state schools seeking to supplement their meager paychecks. "State schools can pay only officially-approved salaries," says researcher Chmielecka. "And professors can't survive on them." She estimates 80%-90% of profs have a second job, often in a private business school.
Chmielecka says this isn't necessarily bad. "Professors share their theoretical knowledge with their private-school students and bring back practical knowledge to their state-school ones," she says. Professors keep their state-school jobs for the prestige: "Every young economist wants a business card with 'SGH' on it," says SGH's Rutkowski.
"The problem starts when professors have so much outside work that they neglect their professorial responsibilities," Chmielecka says.
State or private, Polish business educators agree that Polish business schools need help from foreign academic institutions and close cooperation with companies. WSB-NLU began life as the Sadecko-Podhalanska School of Business with 64 students, volunteer teachers and no curriculum. The Polish consul in Chicago knew that National Louis University, a private university in Evanston, Illinois, was looking for a partner in Poland, and provided the initial contact. Now NLU supplies a full curriculum, and graduates of the hybrid school receive a degree recognized in the US.
What's in it for the foreign partner? "Prestige," Pawlowski answers. "NLU's name is heard around Washington now, perhaps for the first time, because of its activities here."
