Poland is a pathological case, because where communism fell we inherited one thing from it: obligatory two-year service in the army for all men of age 19 (except those with health issues, obviously). And one of the only few reliable ways to avoid it was to go to university.

The result was that literaly thousands of bullshit private universities were created not to educate you, but to help you avoid military. This also created additional income source for university professors, who earn pretty shitty salary in Poland.

Now, obligatory military service was abolished few years ago, but the trend of everyone going to college after high school remained.

Hadn't thought of that, thanks.

I was born and lived in an "university town", and I remember military recruiters in my town were absolutely expecting that everyone's going to university, and they defaulted to giving people the status of "not suitable for service during peace time" for any reason whatsoever. I heard that in smaller towns, on the other hand, it was much more difficult to avoid getting pushed into service.