Poland — an emerging destination for Pak students

LAHORE
Poland has emerged as a new destination in Central Europe which is now attracting good number of international students from South Asia including Pakistan.
This was stated by renowned educationist and career counsellor Syed Azhar Husnain Abidi during a discussion with this correspondent.
Syed Abidi, who has more than 20 years of experience as a provider of education counselling services to his credit, said earlier UK was a key destination for Pakistani students; however, due to stricter and continuously changing visa rules for international students their numbers had significantly dropped. “The recent trend in student mobility is now towards EU, Australia and Canada. However the key issue for Pakistani students remains affordability especially when looking towards medical sciences”, he said.
Talking about education opportunities in Poland, he said the country was offering full MBBS/MD degree which includes medical training/house job in EU hospitals along with practicing licence and opportunities of permanent settlement in a legal way. About the cost of study abroad, he said the normal tuition fee for doing medicine in the UK, US or Australia cost almost Rs4 to 5 million per year which was out of range for the common or middle income groups. However, according to him, the total cost of the full medical programme in Poland (6 years and up to house job) does not exceed Rs7 million all inclusive which is less than half as compared to the above countries.
“These medical universities are public sector and highly recognised and have all modern state-of-the-art facilities and laboratories with internal qualified faculty to deliver these courses”, Mr Abidi said, who visited Poland last year.
Sharing his experience of visiting Poland, he said he visited a number of Polish universities and was highly pleased to see these world-class institutions which were yet unknown in Pakistan. He suggested that Poland was the destination Pakistani students needed to explore without delay. He encouraged young students who aspire to become doctor/engineer to explore study opportunities in Poland by visiting their official site (http://www.go-poland.pl/), saying that he was happy to provide them free information and help in studying and scholarships in Poland to those who are on merit.
Syed Abidi, who is recipient of the most coveted civil award Tamgha-e-Imtiaz, opined that Government of Pakistan and both public and private sector universities needed to seek research and academic links and in collaboration with Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education, he said, he could play a role in assisting in developing these links.