Limiting Privilege: Upward Mobility Within Higher Education in Socialist Poland

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 Lódź, 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.

Author: Agata Zysiak
Publisher: Purdue University Press
Published: 12/15/2023
Pages: 276
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.82lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.58d
ISBN13: 9781612498829
ISBN10: 1612498825
BISAC Categories:
- History | Europe | Poland
- Political Science | Political Ideologies | Communism, Post-Communism & Socialism
- Social Science | Social Classes & Economic Disparity