Recuperation, the University, and fragmenting the working class

[jake williams]

I'll be concise: according to you, how important has the role of postsecondary education been in the rich capitalist countries in suppressing working class militancy? (by providing "a way out of the working class", by turning working class students into bourgeois intellectuals, etc.)

[Jimmie Higgins]

I'll be concise: according to you, how important has the role of postsecondary education been in the rich capitalist countries in suppressing working class militancy? (by providing "a way out of the working class", by turning working class students into bourgeois intellectuals, etc.)I don't really think that was a goal of the expansion of university admissions in the post-war era - it also ended up producing a wave of student radicalism (usually about political issues and quality and focus of education) at the same time that there was low unemployment and even a high school educated union worker could make "middle class" wages.

I think in these countries, it's more that the nature of work and the demands by the bosses of the labor pool changed. So it wasn't really upward mobility of working class students in a class sense... maybe more the downward mobility (or prolitarization) of previously middle class clerical and other kinds of work as companies sought to decrease their labor with new technologies (which needed techs and paper-pushers).