Limiting Privilege
Upward Mobility Within Higher Education in Socialist Poland
Agata Zysiak
- 284 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
Limiting Privilege
Upward Mobility Within Higher Education in Socialist Poland
Agata Zysiak
About This Book
State socialism tried to industrialize, urbanize, encourage the more frequent washing of hands, urge people to leave the church, emancipate women, and electrify citiesâall 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 ?Ăłd?, 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.