From Growth to Decline? Demand-Absorbing Private Higher Education when Demand is Over (CPP RPS 69/2014)

The growth of the private sector in higher education in Europe – in terms of the number of institutions and the share of enrolments in national systems – has been an educational phenomenon of post-communist transition countries. As Daniel C. Levy (2010: 10) points out, though: “one of the key trends in international higher education, the rapid expansion of the private sector now holds one-third of all global enrollments. However, the growth is not unbroken or inexorable and sometimes stalls and even reverses”. Poland is an example of the reversal in question. While the expansion era (1990-2005) was characterized by external privatization (that is, private sector growth, combined with internal privatization, or the increasing role of fees in the operating budgets of public universities), the current contraction era (2005-2025, and possibly beyond) is characterized by what we term “de-privatization”. De-privatization also has external and internal dimensions: the gradual decline in private sector enrolments is combined with a decreasing role of fees in public universities