Success story – 25 years of digitalization of higher education institutions in Poland

10 pages•Published: January 13, 2025

Abstract

The year was 1999. Polish higher education institutions – HEIs (14 in number), with several European partner HEIs, started the Tempus JEP (New Educational Tools) project. The goal was to purchase or develop a student information system (SIS). At this time, only one Polish university had a system of this type with a central database, but it was not suitable for deployment in other HEIs. Other institutions either had separate systems in each dean's office, without a common database, or they had nothing and used Excel on an ad hoc basis. The conclusions from market recognition were not optimistic – there was no central system that could be purchased for everyone with the money available in the project. What to do?
The year is 2024. Polish HEIs (96 in number) are gathered in the University Centre for Informatization (MUCI) consortium† and develop a student information system University Study Oriented System (USOS)‡ for their use. This is a non-profit venture. The USOS system supports all study-related processes, is integrated with other domain systems at the university, and with many central systems in Poland, including systems of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education (further referred to as Ministry), as well as with European networks exchanging data on student and staff mobility (EMREX§, Erasmus Without Paper – EWP**, eduGAIN††).
How did it happen that almost 100 HEIs, differing in profile, scientific category, size and form of ownership, jointly develop a tool necessary in everyday operation? This endeavor covers approximately 50% of public HEIs and 23% of all HEIs in Poland, about 67% of students of public HEIs and 47,35% of students of all HEIs in Poland (data is from December 2022, the numbers are higher in 2024), including majority of the top twenty most prestigious Polish HEIs.
The purpose of this article is to present the USOS system and the MUCI consortium, as well as the path that MUCI and USOS have taken between 1999 and 2024. I hope that readers will find inspiration in this story, both at the organizational and technical level. The history of USOS and MUCI shows that taking challenges pays off.

Keyphrases: consortium of higher education institutions, digitalization of higher education, emrex, european projects, ewp, muci, polish higer education area, student information system, system integration, usos

In: Raimund Vogl, Laurence Desnos, Jean-François Desnos, Spiros Bolis, Lazaros Merakos, Gill Ferrell, Effie Tsili and Manos Roumeliotis (editors). Proceedings of EUNIS 2024 annual congress in Athens, vol 105, pages 1-10.

Links:	https://easychair.org/publications/paper/9MMH
	https://doi.org/10.29007/xq85

BibTeX entry

@inproceedings{EUNIS2024:Success_story_25_years,
  author    = {Janina Mincer-Daszkiewicz},
  title     = {Success story – 25 years of digitalization of higher education institutions in Poland},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of EUNIS 2024 annual congress in Athens},
  editor    = {Raimund Vogl and Laurence Desnos and Jean-François Desnos and Spiros Bolis and Lazaros Merakos and Gill Ferrell and Effie Tsili and Manos Roumeliotis},
  series    = {EPiC Series in Computing},
  volume    = {105},
  publisher = {EasyChair},
  bibsource = {EasyChair, https://easychair.org},
  issn      = {2398-7340},
  url       = {/publications/paper/9MMH},
  doi       = {10.29007/xq85},
  pages     = {1-10},
  year      = {2025}}

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