Adult students at Chmielowski Technical School in Katowice, Poland’s coal and heavy industry hub, often show up for courses on becoming coal miners with a degree or two under their belts.

The problem is that those degrees are in subjects such as marketing or management – not very practical courses but ones that are common at many of the more than 300 private post-secondary institutions that sprang up after communism ended in 1989. “They don’t know a thing. Their education is completely useless,” grumbles Czeslaw Jacher, the school’s director.