Universities
This chapter focuses on universities which, unlike secondary schools that were important in the creation of national uniformity, split the nation again. They did this in two ways, by breaking it up into specialist groups, and by enabling students to establish themselves as the leaders of the emergent new class that young people now came to form. A sizeable proportion of the country's intellectual and technical leaders passed through the institutions of higher learning, which may explain why their general structure and organisation remained largely unchanged. The esprit de corps of their graduates and the conservatism (in professional, as distinct from political, matters) of most of their teachers, preserved their privileged, almost oligarchical, character. They claimed they were democratic because the élite they created was recruited by examination, but there was no real equality of opportunity to pass the examinations.
Keywords: university education, national uniformity, social class, élite
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