\u2018One day a poster announcing the \u201cpreparatory course\u201d, an accelerated training programme for university, appeared in a village in central Poland. The ad presented Pokusa \u2013 a surname meaning temptation \u2013 as the first to enrol: He was accepted after passing an exam. Now he is one of the best students! \u201cYou just have to want to do it,\u201d he explains.\u2019 This is how a local newspaper in 1953 encouraged youths from rural areas to study at the University of \u0141\u00f3d\u017a, a model socialist university established in Poland\u2019s largest industrial city in 1945. In the announcement Mr Temptation is awarded a scholarship, which comes with a dormitory bed healthcare, and subsidized meals. A state-guaranteed job awaited him after graduation. That is if he ever managed to gradu\u00adate: working-class children dropped out of their courses more often than those from the intelligentsia; their peers regarded them as a \u2018mob\u2019 or \u2018boors\u2019.<\/p>\n
Policy for the underprivileged<\/h2>\n
Despite structural obstacles and everyday classism in Poland, Mr Temptation exem\u00adplified state socialism\u2019s greatest aspiration: unprecedented upward mobility. Debate on education under Stalin often recalls how academia was held captive and students were seduced by propaganda rather than considering improved socioeconomic status and equality. However, in the post-WWII period of state socialism, \u2018democratization\u2019 inferred equal access rather than direct rule. The social structure of students was projected to reflect the social structure of society as a whole. It was an attempt to construct not only a new elite but also a new educated citizen within a new society.<\/p>\n
Education was \u2018parameterized\u2019 in post-war socialist republics, making activities measurable and countable. Universities were obliged to respect assigned quotas of students and graduates \u2013 as many as the planned economy needed. Courses became compulsory, and unlike what was called the \u2018aristocratic manner of studying\u2019, students were supposed to emulate factory workers: their study would last almost eight hours per day, include a roll call and be monitored for efficiency. The first three years of study were designed to pre\u00adpare students for practical tasks. An additional two-years\u2019 magister <\/em>(master\u2019s degree) advanced student skills. Work experi\u00adence encouraged contact between students and their future workplaces. Universities became part of a production process aimed at training skilled specialists, with the humanities training future teachers and office workers. Censorship was reinforced, international cooperation strictly controlled, and many disciplines such as sociology labelled as \u2018bourgeois\u2019 and simply abolished.<\/p>\n Despite the negative effect of Soviet so-called educational reform on academia\u2019s autonomy, state socialism suggested new paths of upward mobility for millions. Polish reformers planned higher education provision for as many as 80% of each year\u2019s high-school cohort. Policies of enrolment, points for working-class origin, preparatory courses and learning groups were supposed to advantage those historically socially underprivileged, making the vision of a socialist university a reality.<\/p>\n The democratization of universities, coupling higher education with the economy, has become a global phe\u00adnomenon. In\u00adternships in future workplaces and efforts to produce the professionals needed in indus\u00adtry might even appear more like capitalist than socialist solutions. The captive, state-controlled, highly censored institution may be the stereotype of socialist education, but it is not what made this post-war model distinct. While its central planning, state management and politi\u00adcal control may have been more direct, strict and pre-determined as a public entity than in the West at the time, the most discrete goal of reforming universities under state socialism was equal access to higher education and its benefits for the rest of society. It was these values and the vision of future society as well as the role of the university within it that made this model of the socialist university an alternative to the capitalist model. Discursive declarations in the press and political speeches championing broad access to universities and their role within a wider society are indicative of the socialist university model.<\/p>\n Mr Temptation no doubt took advantage of the \u2018preliminary year\u2019 to help bridge the study gap exacerbated by war. Prospective students from a working-class and\/or rural background were only required to have completed seven years of school. Further legislation provided paid leave for the duration of courses to those already at work as enticement to study. The state reserved a significant quota at universities for those who completed preparatory courses.<\/p>\n Between 1946 and 1958, 22,000 people enrolled on courses in \u0141\u00f3d\u017a and Warsaw. However, only 14,850 completed their studies and less than 32% obtained higher education diplomas; most of the latter were party activists who had only continued their education because they had been encouraged to do so by the Communist Party. Despite these results, preparatory courses represented a radical project for social change, devised from the bottom up. From the outset, conservative members of the academic community and authorities viewed the initiative with great scepticism. Standard students perceived those who had done the preparatory course as threatening newcomers at\u00adtempting to invade the university through their political connections. But the presence of these new participants had no major impact on the social profile of students in general, as they were few in number and often dropped out.<\/p>\n While the first stage of post-war reconstruction brought significant advances in educational development, one can see how limited long-term change actually was from the biographical paths of post-war cohorts. The egalitarian inclusion of student from different social backgrounds \u2013 a key index for the democ\u00adratization of education \u2013 turned out to only be temporary. Peak representation occurred in the first half of the 1950s. During that period, almost 50% of all students were working class. The same was the case for women. The Stalinist period in Poland presented more educational advances for the working class, while the Thaw meant a return to more tradi\u00adtional values, both on levels of gender and class. The mechanisms of social norms were again able to operate unhindered by state reforms.<\/p>\nOpening the university system<\/h2>\n
Disappointed pioneers of progress<\/h2>\n
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