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FIGURE 41. Graduates of institutions of higher learning by major fields of study, selected years (U/OU) (chart)
examination covers both the vocational qualification and the matura, and can lead to higher or further education. There are also technical and vocational schools for students who have completed the lyceum or equivalent, with courses of from 1 to 3 years, technical schools, they are solely concerned with vocational instruction.
3. Higher education
There were 85 institutions of higher education in Poland in 1972, ranging from the 600-year old Jagiellonian University of Krakow to the postwar universities at Lodz, Torun, and Lublin—the last of these a state university existing alongside the Catholic University which deals mainly with theology and canon law. The newest university, at Gdansk, was formed in 1970 from the merger to higher schools of pedagogy and of economics in the area. The total number of institutions has fluctuated over the years—from 32 in the prewar period to a peak of 83 in 1951, then declining through a series of mergers to 75 in 1960, and rising again through new construction and upgraded accreditation of existing schools to the 1972 figure.
Enrollment in institutes of higher learning has increased even more significantly: from 49,500 in 1937/38 (a ratio of 14.1 per 10,000 population) to 330,800 in 1970/71 (a ratio of 101.4 per 10,000 population). The 1972 ratio is about 30% of the U.S. figure. The following tabulation gives the type and enrollment of the institutions of higher learning in the 1970/71 school year:
| Number | Students | |
|---|---|---|
| Universities | 10 | 97,543 |
| Higher technical schools | 18 | 124,855 |
| Higher schools of art | 16 | 5,237 |
| Medical academies | 10 | 22,851 |
| Agricultural academies | 7 | 33,515 |
| Higher schools of economics | 5 | 25,021 |
| Pedagogic institutes | 3 | 11,098 |
| Physical education institutes | 6 | 4,985 |
| Theological academies | 2 | 1,145 |
| Teachers colleges | 6 | 3,657 |
| Maritime academies | 2 | 902 |
By far the greatest number of Polish higher school students are enrolled in technical and related fields of study. The extent to which students have been reoriented from the prevalent prewar academic disciplines, as well as subsequent differences in emphasis on various cases, is shown in Figure 41. The annual number of graduates of universities and other schools of higher learning has fluctuated: from 21,722 in 1950/51 to a low of 16,114 in 1958/59 to a postwar high of 47,117 in 1970/71.
Nowhere have the Communist regime's problems with "bourgeois morality" and the failure of its own indoctrination programs been more persistent than in the field of higher education, which has been the most rapidly expanding area of Polish education as well as a hotbed of periodic ideological dissent.
Persistent dissent among university students in Warsaw and several other major university centers boiled over in March 1968 into open demonstrations and riots, which began as calls for the redress of genuine academic grievances and related issues of individual liberty but soon widened into broad political and economic demands. Caught off guard, the Gomulka regime took several long-range steps to reinstitute control and prevent a recurrence. Among the most important measures introduced were a newly revitalized point system for university entrance favoring children of worker, peasant and other "socially desirable" backgrounds; a new law for higher schools designed to strengthen party control at the expense of faculty power and independence; an administrative reorganization of some higher schools;
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