Studies structure in the Czech Republic

The Czech Republic attracts young Poles due to the geographic neighbourhood and a language, which is similar to Polish and sounds familiar. The membership in the European Union gives us the possibility to study at our southern neighbour's universities.

The Czech educational system is similar to the Polish one.

The higher education is divided between:

• post-high school vocational schools
• higher vocational schools
• academic level:
  • universities
  • non-universities

The Czech higher schools (vysoká škola) usually offer three stages of studies:

• 3-year Bachelor's studies (Bakalář)
• 5-year Master's studies (Magistr)
• 3-year doctoral studies

There are schools, which the students graduate with the Bachelor's degree only. There are universities (univerzita), technical high schools (vysoké učeni technické and technická univerzita), which corresponds to the Polish technical universities and academies. The universities accept students, who passed their maturity exam, pass the entrance exams and meet other requirements of the schools. The Czech higher schools usually accept about half of the candidates, so the competition is pretty high. Our neighbours have three army higher schools and the Police Academy. Higher vocational schools (vyšši odborná škola) are actually quite interesting, as they offer education in very challenging and difficult technical professions, but they do not offer degrees.

The classes are held in Czech, English and German.

In the Czech Republic there are four centres of e-learning: in Prague, Liberec, Brno and Olomouc. The National E-Learning Centre was established in 1995. Apart from the institutions subordinate to this organisation, there are also non-governmental organisations, which offer this type of studies.