Coming soon...

Projekt College has the ambition of setting off a chain effect of reform in Polish higher education. It is an initiative aimed at demonstrating that there is an alternative to the traditional methods of teaching and management in Polish universities. We aim to spread the concept of liberal education and to establish the first ever Polish liberal arts college, modelled on the leading American liberal arts colleges, such as Princeton, Amherst, or Williams.

Polish university students are too often left to their own devices. Narrow specializations, dearth of practical classes, feeling of isolation and anonymity of students, an emphasis on imparting erudition but not creative thinking – these deficiencies of Polish higher education result in Polish graduates being unprepared for creative roles in the modern marketplace, passive, and unsure of themselves. They do not confront challenges, and do not want to, or do not know how to, change the world around them.

Liberal education is an alternative for those who want something more from life, the able and open-minded individuals who look forward to university education but who do not want, at age eighteen, to restrict themselves to a single traditional university subject. They need not be forced to do so: one can study philosophy and literature and then become a war correspondent; one can be an economist who has read Plato. Why shouldn't an art historian try his luck at painting, only to ultimately become a successful entrepreneur on the creative industries market? University education can be a transformative experience, a time of searching for and discovering one’s talents, a time of awakening one’s dreams and ambitions. At the same time, university education must, through intensely rigorous intellectual training, provide the tools needed to realize such aspirations.

Liberal education means:

• Interdisciplinarity: artificial disciplinary divisions are replaced with a problem-based curriculum
• Thinking: developing critical skills, as opposed to rote learning
  
• Initiative: ability to defend one’s reasoned point of view, participation in debate, emphasis on individual creative work, never on passive attendance
• Preparation for life: acquiring not only knowledge, but also skills (observational, interpretive, communicative, inter-personal, entrepreneurial) needed to flourish in life and to succeed in any career
• Comprehensive personal development: intellectual, ethical, social, and professional; athletic and artistic activity; participation in community life, internships in NGOs and other businesses
• "Mentor-student" relationship: close contact with the professor
• Small groups: welcoming atmosphere in class, conducive to creative learning
• Community: students and instructors live and work together

Here in Poland, we have only recently been in a position to shape our future. We need courageous young people ready to make a difference. Through our program drawing on the best of the American college tradition and the European conception of the university, we aim to form such people and encourage them, while attracting students from other countries and thus contributing to international understanding.