The view that good education is important to succeed is shared by 69 per cent of Poles. This is a decrease by 10 percentage points over the last decade, according to the recently published results of the POLPAN social structure survey.
The 6th edition of the survey took place between April and December 2018. The same people regularly participate in the panel part of the survey (some from the beginning). This allows the POLPAN to analyze the fate of the respondents in a long term.
The view that good education is important to succeed was shared in 1988 by 60 per cent of Poles. This percentage grew in the following years, to around 80 per cent in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Over the last decade, however, there has been a decrease of around 10 percentage points – today, around 69 per cent of respondents believe that a good education is important to a successful life.
The generation of “crisis” (born 1956-1959), who entered adulthood during the political and economic crisis of the 1980s, to this day shows a greater distrust than others in the importance of individual agency, efforts and personal abilities. Interestingly, also the generation of “transformation” (born in 1968-1971) shows still less faith in meritocracy than the oldest generation of “little stabilization” (born in 1940-1944), and the youngest generation of “open borders” (born around 1986 r.).
A social system in which a person’s position depends on individual effort and competence is called meritocracy.