EN
In 2006, the European Commission presented the Modernization Agenda for Universities founded on three reforms: curricular, governance and funding. According to the agenda, funding should be based on output-oriented budgeting. What is more, investment in higher education should bring benefits to all stakeholders. The most commonly used tool for measuring the private rate of return to education is Mincer’s econometric model. The paper presents the results of research on the private rate of return to education, which was estimated by the classical Mincerian function where wages are modelled as a function of level of education and experience. Empirical research was conducted using individual data from the Social Diagnosis – research of selected Polish households. The study was conducted in two stages. First, the parameters of the Mincer’s model for respondents included in the diagnosis in 2011 were estimated. Secondly, the parameters of the model for respondents, who declared in 2011 having higher education degree and who took part in the diagnosis in previous years (since 2003) and then declared a lower (other than higher) level of education, were estimated. To determine the significance of differences in monthly net incomes before and after reaching the higher education degree, the Wilcoxon Matched-Pairs Signed-Rank Test was used.