Education Goes Global is the first book on internationalisation of higher education and its global context published in Poland. It compares and discusses experience of several countries and provides a body of basic facts on the subject.

The prime purpose of the book is to stimulate public debate on challenges of internationalisation facing higher education in Poland and to provide wider international background for such a debate.

The main part of the book consists of a case study on internationalisation of higher education in Germany. The author spent two years in Germany attending numerous seminars and conferences at the Humboldt University and Free University in Berlin and interviewed dozens of officials in institutions responsible for internationalisation of higher education in Germany. While discussing the process of internationalisation in Germany the author points out and describes those positive solutions and best practices that can serve as inspiration for Poland in this country’s quest for a way to successfully internationalise its own thirdary education.

Analysing the German example, and in a narrower scope examples of United Kingdom, Australia and two Asian countries: China and Malaysia, the author tries to identify factors that contribute to a break through in the process of internationalisation and help speed the process up. She also attempts to pint point the stage of the process when the idea of internationalisation no longer is a subject of concern of individual higher education institution but becomes a subject of a co-ordinated policy on the national level.

The subject of internationalisation of higher education is particularly important in Poland as the country has not yet developed a comprehensive strategy in this field. There is an urgent need for such a strategy and the author hopes that her book will serve as a useful tool in the future discussion on internationalisation of education.

Education Goes Global is the first book in the planned Study in Poland mini library that through series of publications will provide those concerned with a necessary knowledge on practical, political and strategic aspects of internationalisation of higher education both on national and global scale.

To say that Poland is at the forefront of international higher education would be an overstatement. Unlike the U.S., where the President and the Senate declared support for student mobility, or the U.K., where Tony Blair announced his Prime Minister’s Initiative and the Minister of Education urged universities to work towards internationalization, no prominent Polish politician or public body has publicly addressed the matter.

This is not to say that Polish authorities, especially those responsible for higher education, have a negative attitude towards the internationalization of higher education; they had other pressing priorities. After the doors to higher education opened in 1989, the government no longer set quotas restricting how many young Poles could become doctors, lawyers or engineers and higher education was in bigger demand than anybody imagined. In addition, Poland experienced a baby boom in the late 1990s and the number of students grew from half a million in1992/93 to two million in 2005/06. It became evident that public universities did not have the capacity to meet the new number of students and the government focused its efforts on meeting this need. In September of 1990, the government passed a new law permitting the establishment of private schools in an effort to remedy the shortage of schools. The private sector quickly responded and Poland today has over 300 private institutions enrolling over 600,000 student.