Graduates from upper secondary schools have a wide variety of educational possibilities at the level of tertiary education:

• college programmes (ISCED 5B), provided by public and non-public teacher training colleges, foreign language teacher training colleges and colleges of social work, which last 3 years and are classified as tertiary education for international comparisons, but are not recognised as higher education in the national legislation;

• degree programmes (ISCED 5A), provided by both public and non-public university-type and non-university higher education institutions, which comply with relevant requirements, including:

   - first-cycle (Bachelor's degree) programmes which last 3 to 4 years and lead to the degree of licencjat or 3.5 to 4 years and lead to the degree of inżynier, depending on the field of study;
- second-cycle (Master's degree) programmes which last 1.5 to 2 years and lead to the degree of magister or an equivalent degree, depending on the field of study;
- long-cycle (Master's degree) which last between 4.5 and 6 years and lead to the degree of magister or an equivalent degree;

• third-cycle or doctoral programmes (ISCED 6) which last 3 to 4 years and are provided by units of university-type higher education institutions authorised to confer either the postdoctoral academic degree of doktor habilitowany or the academic degree of doktor in at least two different disciplines of a given area of science; and research institutions other than higher education institutions (units of the Polish Academy of Sciences and research and development institutions) authorised to confer the post-doctoral academic degree of doktor habilitowany.

HEIs are distinguished between university-type HEIs and non-university HEIs.

1. University-type HEIs are HEIs in which at least one organisational unit (e.g. faculty) is authorised to award the academic degree of PhD (polish: doktor). University-type HEIs may provide degree programmes (ISCED 5A), including first-cycle programmes leading to a Bachelor's degree (licencjat or inżynier) and/or second-cycle or long-cycle programmes leading to a Master's degree (magister or an equivalent degree), and doctoral programmes (ISCED 6).

2. Non-university HEIs are HEIs which provide the same types of degree programmes as university-type HEIs,i.e. first-cycle, second-cycle and/or long-cycle programmes, but are not authorised to award the academic degree of PhD or provide doctoral programmes. Non-university HEIs include HEIs referred to as „higher vocational education schools" which are authorised to provide only Bachelor's degree programmes.

IPO