Poland is taking steps to attract more foreign students to help its universities offset lower levels of enrolment due to demographic decline, the country’s higher education minister has announced. Marcin Kulasek told the Polish Press Agency (PAP) that Turkey, South Korea, Vietnam and Uzbekistan are among the countries where the government has been seeking to cultivate stronger academic ties. Minister nauki: chcemy zwiększać liczbę zagranicznych studentów w Polsce#PAPinformacjehttps://t.co/CM9N2xTcz4 — Polska Agencja Prasowa/Polish Press Agency (PAP) (@PAPinformacje) April 23, 2026 The number of foreign students at Polish universities has risen rapidly over the last two decades.

In 2004, when Poland joined the European Union, there were only around 8,800. By 2022, the figure had passed 100,000 for the first time, with foreigners making up 9% of all students in Poland. A recent report by the University of Economics in Katowice found that foreign students contribute about 6.8 billion zloty (€1.6 billion) a year to the Polish economy.

However, growth has slowed over the last two years amid a clampdown on student visas by the current government, which came to power in late 2023. It said that abuses in the system had allowed some immigrants to use student visas as a backdoor to work in Poland or migrate to other EU countries. As a result, by the 2024/25 academic year, the number of foreign students had risen only marginally, to around 108,000, reports PAP.

The largest numbers were from Ukraine (47,000), Belarus (12,000) and Turkey (5,000). Far fewer visas for foreign students have been issued by Poland this year after a clampdown by the new government following reports of abuses under the previous administration. The largest numbers of rejected applicants are from Iraq, Nigeria and Turkey https://t.co/OLTZHSHm8t — Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) September 27, 2024 The government and the National Agency for Academic Exchange (NAWA) are now stepping up efforts to increase academic collaboration with several strategic partners.

Among them is Uzbekistan, whose citizens already make up the ninth-largest group of foreign students in Poland. The two countries last week signed a letter of intent on building closer academic ties, including through student exchanges and research projects. Poland and Turkey are planning to sign a similar memorandum of understanding next month, while Kulasek told PAP that the government also plans to renew an academic exchange agreement with Vietnam and is seeking to work in this area with South Korea, too.

Click here to help us continue providing news free from paywalls and ads The minister said that attracting more foreign students can help Polish universities meet the challenges of a declining population, including a falling proportion of young people. Poland has one of the world’s lowest fertility rates. The number of deaths has been higher than the number of births in each of the last 13 years.

Statistics Poland (GUS), a state agency, last year forecast that the pre-working-age population would fall from 18.2% now to just 11.9% by 2060. “The response lies in internationalisation, that is, attracting foreign students who wish to study at good Polish universities,” Kulasek told PAP. “Universities need them, including to operate normally and stay financially afloat on the market.” He noted that studying in Poland is much cheaper than in countries like the UK and France, while the quality of teaching at Polish universities is also a pull factor for many foreign students.

Kraków’s student population has shrunk by almost 40% in just over a decade. To stem the decline, the city – famous for its universities, in particular the 660-year-old Jagiellonian – is hoping to attract more students from abroad https://t.co/1Vlq2vgNTl — Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) June 4, 2024 In 2024, the city of Kraków – famous for its universities, in particular the 660-year-old Jagiellonian – revealed that its student population had shrunk by almost 40% in a decade. To compensate, it was seeking to attract more students from abroad.

However, last year, the government put tougher new measures in place, including stricter requirements to prove proficiency in Polish, stronger verification of candidates’ qualifications, and a 50% cap on the proportion of students at a single university that can be foreign. Prime Minister Donald Tusk emphasised at the time that Poland remains “open to everyone from all over the world who wants to study at Polish universities”, but that the authorities need to “prevent this from being exploited by organisers of illegal immigration”. Speaking to PAP, Kulasek said that the government