Poland Will No Longer Issue Student Visas to Applicants Without High School Diplomas

Poland will no longer issue student visas to international students who do not have a high school diploma, media reports say. This decision, announced by Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski, is part of the country’s efforts to prevent visa abuse by people who seek illegal employment within EU countries.

This decision also comes after a scandal reported by the Polish daily Dziennik Gazeta Prawna in May. As reported, some student student visas were issued to people not eligible for college admission in their home countries.

In an interview with TV broadcaster TVN 24, Foreign Minister Sikorski said that many of these individuals often did not pursue degrees at the universities they enrolled in. Instead, they used their student visas to work in the Schengen nations.

“A student visa grants the right to work for one year, which led to numerous cases where individuals obtained visas and never attended the university that facilitated their entry,” Sikorski told TVN 24, adding that the new rules were necessary to protect the education system and make sure that visas are issued only to eligible students.

Meanwhile, the ministry clarified in a press release that this decision does not introduce new legal measures but simply reinforces existing laws. It further said that Polish authorities should have always verified high school diplomas as a standard practice, though some universities have sometimes enforced it.

According to the Gazeta Wyborcza, up to 350,000 visas might have been granted to nationals from Bangladesh, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria and Pakistan over two years through a corrupt practice, which includes officials accepting bribes to approve their visas. However, more investigation revealed that numbers may have been inflated.

According to the “Foreign Students in Poland 2023” report published by the Educational Foundation “Perspektywy,” more than 100,000 international students from 179 countries chose Poland as their study-abroad destination during the 2022/23 academic year.

The report shows that the number of international students in Poland has tripled in the past ten years, reaching its highest (105,404). These students accounted for 8.4 percent of all students pursuing higher education in the country, an increase from 7.1 percent in 2021/22.

The majority of students (48,150) are from Ukraine, followed by countries like Belarus (12,011 students), Zimbabwe (3,598 students), Turkey (3,435 students), and more.

Polish educational institutions have seen a notable improvement in international enrollment since 2004, when Poland joined the EU. That year, only 8,800 international students moved to Poland for study purposes.

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