The mission of the Cracow University of Technology as a state, public, autonomous university is to disseminate knowledge based on scientific research performed by its staff.
Maintaining the academic traditions and keeping the proven organization structures, the scientific research as well as the resulting educational activities should concentrate on selected areas meaningful both from the point of view of knowledge development on world scale as well as the country's economy. At the verge of the first decade of the 21st century such areas that may be explored at the Cracow University of Technology are: environment protection, power engineering, communication and information technologies. These areas should permeate the activities of all faculties and encourage creating, should such necessity arise, new institutions within the university.
Scientific research should be performed mainly based on the financial means acquired from outside (state and international grants, co-operation with industry); government means centrally granted to the university for scientific research should be used directly for covering equipment and staff costs incurred by realization of the research. Particular emphasis should be put on the application of the research that leads to effective technology transfer between the university and industry.
University education should be of general basic character, enabling the graduates to undertake jobs that, though not existing at present, may emerge as a result of civilization development. In this context stress should be put on developing self-education and life long learning abilities, using information technologies. At the same time, the students taking more responsibility for their learning should be granted closer personal contact with their teachers. Such approach, however, may require a reduction of the number of obligatory lectures and changing the traditional division into lectures, laboratories and seminars towards more individualized education.
Utilization of the high scientific potential of the academic staff of the university and care for its constant growth should lead to involving students in research activities at an as early stage as possible. This will require shifting the momentum from the undergraduate (engineering studies BSc Eng type) to studying on the graduate and postgraduate levels (MSc and PhD).
The University, as a high public utility institution, must care for creating the atmosphere favourable to raising the general cultural level of the students through including humanistic values into the syllabus and requiring from the graduate good knowledge of foreign languages and fluent communication in mother tongue as well as knowledge of the Polish history and culture.