Demographic capital, education and language
10.03.2010
Demographic capital
Investors who have already decided to settle in Poland agree that the most impressive feature of the Polish market is the number of young, highly qualified workers that are available.
As for Małopolska, the population continues to rise. What’s more, the population structure in the region is characterised by the share accounted for by young people being higher than the national average (people aged 15 or under constituted 16.8% of the population in Małopolska while in Poland this age group accounted for a 15.8% share of the population structure in 2008).
Education
Most people in the region have completed primary and secondary education, however, more people in Małopolska finish primary and secondary schools than in Poland on the whole (in 2006 in the region 63.1% of the population completed primary and secondary education, in Poland this group constituted 62.6%). In 2006 14.1% of the population of Małopolska had completed tertiary education, while overall in Poland, this figure was 13.9%. In Kraków in 2006 this number was even higher – 21.4%.
Kraków is one of the largest academic centers in Poland
In 2008 there were over 210,000 students studying, i.e. 10.8% of the total number of students in Poland (the graph on the right shows the number of students in Poland compared with the biggest EU countries). Furthermore, in Kraków in 2008 there were 24 Higher-education establishments (34 in total in Małopolska), whereas in Poland there were 448 Higher Education Establishments in total. Some of the tertiary schools in Kraków are well known abroad such as the Jagiellonian University, the AGH University of Science and Technology and the University of Economics – economic, technical and IT majors are the most popular among students studying in Kraków.
Language
As to languages, English is the most popular foreign language among young people and in the business community in Małopolska. English is taught in primary, secondary and tertiary schools – almost 70% of students in tertiary schools know English. German (14% of students in tertiary schools), Russian (8%) and French (5%) are other popular languages that are taught and used by people in Małopolska.
The article from Doing Business - publication prepared by: PriceWaterhouseCoopers in the cooperation with MARR