Conservative university for ‘elites’ signs up one student

A university set up in Warsaw by Ordo Iuris, a prominent conservative legal group, with political and financial backing from the Polish government has registered only one new student this year. They will be taught by 34 lecturers, reports Notes from Poland.

Collegium Intermarium was founded two years ago, declaring at the time that it would “become a forge of elites for the entire region”. Its inauguration was attended by Poland’s education minister, Przemyslaw Czarnek, and culture minister, Piotr Gliski, as well as Hungary’s then justice minister, Judit Varga. Czarnek said at the event that Collegium Intermarium would bolster the struggle against the “absurd ideologies” of “postmodernism and neo-Marxism”.

In 2021 and 2022, the university and the foundation that runs it received almost PLN2.7 million (US$651,000) in grants from the education ministry and the National Freedom Institute, a body set up by the government in 2017 and overseen by the culture ministry, reports news website Wirtualna Polska. However, despite that support, Collegium Intermarium has been educating relatively few students. In its first two academic years, it signed up just 14 people for the only degree course it offers – law. Only 11 of them currently remain on the programme.
Full report on the Notes from Poland site