Public university mergers : a Polish example

Consolidations in Polish higher education have been developing since the 1990s, although in the first two decades they were rather incidental. Intensification of mergers of private higher education institutions has occurred in recent years under the influence of increased competition. In Poland, the consolidation processes of universities in the last 25 years have been spontaneous and of a bottom-up nature. They did not take the form of a merger wave and were not implemented systemically. Among several public-sector mergers, two were strategic in nature. In recent years the largest scale of consolidations has been among private universities, forced by a falling demand for education. The aim of the article is to describe the process of merging public universities in Poland. The research methodology in the article was based on the analysis of the merger of two Polish public universities. The article has a review nature and uses exemplification in the form of a case study and constitutes a starting point for further in-depth research in the field of university mergers in Poland. The article describes the importance of mergers between universities in an era of legal changes taking place in the Polish higher education system. The case study includes the merger of the Medical Academy in Cracow into the structure of the Jagiellonian University and as described in the article can be an exemplification of the federal merger process