Peter Vodopivec and Aleš Gabrič
Introduction
For some time, the researchers studying various aspects of social and 
economic development in the 19t h and 20t h century have been pointing at the 
crucial role of education, schooling system and high-education institutions in 
the processes of social and economic modernisation and political and social 
démocratisation. These processes could not take place without the spread of 
literacy, professionalization and communication using written language and 
media; and neither without the formation of educated and business elites, 
which became an indispensable dynamic factor of social, economic and cultural 
changes. In particular in the countries and nations with only weak urban middle- 
class population and slow development of non-agrarian economy (small trades 
and industry), educational institutions and universities were one of the most 
important factors of social mobility and transformation, which paved the way 
for the emergence of urbanized middle-class population and modern social and 
economic flows. In the 19th century, a large part of higher-education and university 
students were schooled outside their home environment; until 1918 students in 
the Habsburg monarchy were mostly schooled at the university centres within 
the monarchy, whereas the students from the South-Eastern European countries 
attended also Western European universities. Afterwards, they all conveyed their 
knowledge and economic, social and political development views to the local 
and wider national environment. With gradual establishing of higher-education 
and university institutions in the environments and countries where they had not 
existed before, new scientific and university centres started to emerge in Central 
and South-Eastern Europe in the second half of the 19t h century; they accelerated 
the formation of educated elites and encouraged their modernisation efforts.
This publication includes the contributions presented at the symposium 
“The Role of Education and Universities in Modernization and Europeanization 
Processes in Central and South-Eastern European Countries in the 19th and 20th 
Century” organised by the Institute of Contemporary History and the Austrian 
Science and Research Liaison Office in Ljubljana on 26 and 27 November 2009. The 
main purpose of the symposium was to present and compare the latest research 
on this subject and encourage discussions on how modernity was perceived,

understood and put into effect by the educated elites in the Central European 
and South Eastern European countries with in many aspects different, but also 
comparable social, cultural and national historical experiences. The diversity of 
approaches proposed by the authors of the papers clearly reveals the complexity 
of this subject, which could be studied from many various perspectives and in 
various manners.
The organisation of the symposium and publishing of the collection of papers 
was made possible by the financial support of the Austrian Science and Research 
Liaison Office in Ljubljana and its director Dr. Miroslav Polzer, Slovenian 
Research Agency and the Institute of Contemporary History in Ljubljana.