Why do smart Poles not want paid studies for talented, non-elite youth, which was introduced to us, Lithuanians, by Andrius Kubilius and Gintaras Steponavičius, while the elite youth in Lithuania has a lot of money to hire good tutors, so they get good grades and study for free, although they have the means to pay for their studies

"Aleksandra Ptak-Iglewska: Candidate for the Polish presidency Sławomir Mentzen wants to return to a serf-based Poland without schools and doctors.

 

Closed university doors to people who do not belong to the richest elite, absence of a doctor, loneliness and forced childbirth for women - all this was already in the 19th and 20th centuries - and this harmful absurdity alone would condemn young people to poverty, after all, universities open doors and minds, studies provide access to knowledge and well-paid, specialized professions that allow us to overcome the limitations of the place of birth, I am shocked that this is being proposed by a person who is himself after receiving a doctorate, he heads the tax inspectorate and at the same time earns money from his generation. I am currently reading "Chłopki. Opowieść o nasze babkach" by Joanna Kuciel-Frydryszak and I cannot help but feel that Mentzen's vision of the future is already described there, in the chapters between children wandering among cows and women being fired from their jobs because of pregnancies resulting from rape. And in families faced with the terrible dilemma of which of their children to send to the service and which - to continue their studies.

 

The USA is not a good direction.

 

The fact is that studies in the USA are paid and this is one of the reasons, along with the absurdly high cost of medical care, why today the USA is increasingly moving away from a country that promises social progress, and graduates there enter adult life burdened with several hundred thousand dollars in debt for their studies. After giving birth, the hospital bill there can also reach 30,000 dollars. In Poland, it is zero dollars, and we pay the same for tuition at state universities. This is a great success for the Poles, which no one has yet managed to ruin, although we still do not live in paradise.

 

Free education means that the doors to polytechnics and universities are open to everyone: to the children of a taxi driver, a hairdresser, to the children of both a clerk and a tax consultant at NewConnect. As a result, the Polish economy will benefit from talented children, even if they were born not in Wilanów or Konstancin-Jeziorna, but in Grójec, Walbrzych or near Szczecin. Note here that Polish universities are not saints, they barely fit into the fifth hundred of the Shanghai ranking and do not want to reform, and until Wednesday the dean of the Faculty of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Warsaw was a man who used mobbing and sexually harassed employees and students. Although it was an open secret, there was no reaction from the rector for at least a year.

 

That is why this week, in light of such events, I feel strange defending free education, but it is true, because although today the personnel policy of universities requires calling the Inquisition, education itself is Poland's treasure and a source of hope for the future.

 

The poverty rate will not disappear due to the lack of schools. The poor will be poorer. What arguments for paid studies? None. There would be fewer and fewer applicants for universities, because the poverty rate in Poland is still high, and Mentzen would like to raise it by abolishing the 800+ program and additional pensions. And although we live in strange times of technological leap and it is difficult to predict who will earn well in 10 or 20 years, and many teenagers want to be TikTokers, a rich country is built on a knowledge-based economy, not show business.

 

But that is not all. Mentzen also wants to force women to have children, even if the pregnancy is the result of a crime. Who would then take care of the child, the abused woman or the father – the rapist? Would you also like the candidate Mentzen to force these people into forced marriage so that they could create a family home? If you can imagine hell on earth, living in a country with no access to higher education, no reproductive rights, paid healthcare and practically closed borders, then Mentzen’s Poland would be suitable. But why is this image so attractive to young men?”

 

Lithuania is hell on earth? Thank you, A. Kubilius and G. Steponavičius.