Limiting Privilege

Upward Mobility Within Higher Education in Socialist Poland

Agata Zysiak

• Publisher: Purdue University Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN:
  9781612498829
  9781612498812
• eBook ISBN:
  9781612498836
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

State socialism tried to industrialize, urbanize, encourage the more frequent washing of hands, urge people to leave the church, emancipate women, and electrify cities—all within a single lifetime. Central to these initiatives was extending educational opportunities to the working class and creating a vision of an egalitarian socialist university that offered advancement for all. Limiting Privilege: Upward Mobility Within Higher Education in Socialist Poland traces the possibilities and limits of this goal by looking at a model socialist university established in 1945 in the working-class city of ?ód?, Poland. Initially a flagship project of socialist modernization, the university tried to offer social advancement by privileging admission for peasant and working-class children, but these efforts were often fought by the elite who sought to preserve their privilege. By looking at first-generation students, intelligentsia faculty, and an industrial city, Limiting Privilege explores a complex story about utopian visions, failed aspirations, and reluctant academia.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Interwar Traps
• 2. Revolution and Modernization
• 3. The University for New Times
• 4. Rising Expectations
• 5. The Future Designed
• 6. Educational Desires
• 7. Academic Biography
• 8. Newcomers to Academia
• Conclusions
• Appendix
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author