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Summary: BRUCE G. CHARLTON and PETER ANDRAS
Universities and social progress
in modernising societies:
how educational expansion
has replaced socialism as an
instrument of political reform
The social role of formal education
To understand the forces leading to university expansion we must first
consider the function of formal education in modernising societies.
Modernisation is the process by which a society grows in complexity;
greater complexity enables increasing efficiency and capability.1
Growth in
social complexity can be seen in phenomena such as `the division of labour'
with its ever-greater specialisation of the functions performed by
individuals, and the increasing differentiation of society into functionally
specialised systems such as politics, the economy, the legal system, the
armed forces, health service, the mass media, and education. These social
systems are themselves becoming increasingly more complex, subdivided
and sub-specialised.2
Modern societies are no longer essentially hierarchical, but have come to
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