While referring to Agata Zysiak’s book Punkty za pochodzenie. Powojenna modernizacja i uniwersytet w robotniczym mieście [Points for Class Origin: Post-War Modernization and the University in a Working-Class City] (2016) the author’s intention is to provide an independent voice in the debate on plans to modernize the institution of the university, both in PPR times and at present. She describes the role of the university in Poland’s ideologically created socio-economic modernization. Both the communist and post-transformation reforms of the social system can be treated as being defined by the modernization imperative and a similarly legitimated attempt to overcome backwardness. The following points are raised: (1) the significance of the institution of higher learning in the modernization of the country; (2) the vision of a higher-learning institution guiding two outstanding academics of those times; (3) the university in the public discourse of the communist era; (4) the career paths of the recipients of university educations, that is, the students and graduates of the socialist university; (5) and the career paths of academics in the Polish People’s Republic. Consideration of these questions through the communist and capitalist prisms of modernization changes in Poland makes it possible to advance theses about the function of a higher-learning institution, regardless of the dominant political system.
