Early careers of tertiary graduates in Poland: employability, earnings, and differences between public and private higher education

Poland's system of higher education has expanded rapidly in the last quarter century. Not all graduates of the massified educational system have succeeded in the labor market. Part of the public debate regarding the labor market performance of graduates focuses on the performance of graduates who attended private institutions and part-time programs. As yet, there has been no detailed research into the career paths of recent university graduates in Poland, let alone a comprehensive investigation of the differences between the performance of graduates of various types of studies. In this paper, we present the newly created Polish Graduate Tracking System. We use data from the system to evaluate the labor market performance of recent graduates and to demonstrate the differences between graduates of public and private education. Overall, the privately educated graduates fare better on the labor market, but a more in-depth analysis shows that this could be attributed to their strategy of early entry into the labor market

Dokładniej, rzetelniej, taniej. Badania oparte na rejestrach publicznych jako szansa dla badań społecznych w Polsce

A social research project concerning various social issues (including education, labour market, demography, migration, epidemiology) can be conducted with registerbased analysis. The knowledge about the potential and limits of this approach allows to reconcile the seemingly contradictory features of the study of complex social phenomena: effectiveness and low cost. Register-based analysis can solve a number of methodological problems, such as a decreasing response rate and a low reliability of data. The paper presents the methodology of register-based analysis. The experiences gathered during the research project conducted by the authors allowed to improve the above mentioned methodology. The methodological reflections are complemented with the results of research on educational and professional careers of the University of Warsaw graduates, based on the registers of UW and Social Insurance Institution. In addition, the authors present selected technological, administrative, and organisational problems that need to be answered in order to conduct register-based research. The methodological conclusions of the paper develop the work of Scandinavian researchers who are the most experienced scientists in the field of register-based analysis