Higher Education 27: 271-295, 1994. �9 1994 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

Through a glass darkly? Indigeneity, information, and the image of the Peruvian University

DAVID POST Penn State University, 315 Rackely Building, University Park, PA 16803, U.S.A.

Using a survey of Cusco secondary students from 1985, and data from a survey of Peruvian workers in 1991, this essay discusses the degree of "realism" in students' expectations of the economic benefits of going to university. Public universities, like national school systems, ,are often seen as socially integrative institutions in countries which are marked by ethnic and class inequality. This view prevails even when university education is known to confer rewards unequally among ethnic groups, e.g,, in Peru to the Spanish-speaking and minority Quechua-speaking populations. The puzzle of the continued high expectations of university, even among indigenous, Quechua-speaking students, is explored in this article. It is found that students' access to information, and their academic ability, both incl~ease the realism of expectations among Spanish- and Quechua-language boys from Cusco. Yet, tellingly, this realism reduces the university benefits that are expected among Quechua students with higher grades in Peruvian history, and among Quechua speakers who read newspapers frequently. The opposite pattern is seen among Spanish speakers: more frequent readers of newspapers, and better history students, expect higher salaries as a result of going to university. The implications of the findings for social integration in societies such as Peru are discussed in the conclusion.

National school systems develop national identities. One way they do this, apart from teaching a common curriculum, is s imply by being national systems: they socialize their non-students, as well as their students, when they are seen as legitimate sanctioners of differentiation and distinction, and of success and failure in their societies (Meyer 1977). Officially egalitarian nations especially rely on higher education for legit imacy by sustaining the image that all can benefit from participation in the system. Alexis de Tocquevil le (1969 [1848], p. 452) observed that in nations embracing the ideal of social equality one finds a pervasive popular bel ief in the "indefinite perfectibili ty of man." The United States can be considered a leader among countries which, through mass systems, indefinitely postpone failure, and delay to adulthood the types of distinction which other countries confer at a young age. ~ However, there are two important limitations on the institutional legit imacy of higher education. An education system fosters social integration only when the sys tem's apex, the national university, is popularly imagined 1) to be equally available for all, and 2) to confer rewards equally for all. Naturally, the true availabili ty of university education and the true rewards from participation are important, as well, but only insofar as they affect the images formed by students and parents. Such images are - at one level of analysis - the subject of this essay. At a more fundamental level, this essay examines the foundations of legit imacy in an emerging welfare state of the Third World.

This article examines perceptions of higher education in Peru, a country whose mass education system - comprehensive secondary schooling followed by

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comprehensive university entrance for nearly half of all secondary graduates - has been viewed as socially integrative by its political leaders. The role of education in the integration of Peruvian society has become particularly central in the past twenty years, with the demise of clientelistic, oligarchic relationships. Because disparities in life chances and welfare prevail between persons of indigenous as opposed to European (or Asian or African) descent, the importance of higher education in fostering national cohesion has been accepted by all recent Peruvian governments. To ameliorate inequality and foster cohesion, Latin American countries generally have allowed the "massification" of their universities in response to social demand (see Balan's (1993) introduction to Higher Education 25(1)). Peru, despite acute economic recession in the 1980s, was not prepared to interfere with an expansion of higher education that ranked among the very most massive and most accelerated in all of Latin America (Post 1991a). Thus, the first of the two criteria necessary for fostering social integration have been met in Peru, i.e., the apparent availability of higher education for all. That is, today it is popularly believed that with perseverance and resolve all Peruvian parents can realistically aspire to send their children to one of their country's 45-plus autonomous universities.

However, the operation of the higher education system is also believed - at least by social scientists - not to confer the same benefits to all students. Wide regional differences exist in the job opportunities and income earned by university graduates in the developed formal sector economies of Peru's urban areas, as opposed to rural areas. And large differences also persist in the monetary returns which are received by indigenous as opposed to criollo (non-indigenous) Peruvians. The question then arises of what happens to the "dream deferred", to echo Langston Hughes' phrase. Will social integration break down, given persisting inequality of result? 2 The gradual or even sudden erosion of legitimacy is certainly one possibility. That the (over) expansion of education could eventually result in radical change has been contemplated, among those who have studied Peru, by Carnoy (1982; cf. Camoy 1974). The opportunities available for university graduates usually fall short of their expectations, as do their incomes. In extreme cases, students' diminished perceptions of personal benefit can influence their receptiveness to radical social change (Post 1988). Thus, given the actual inequality of returns to Peruvian higher education, it is possible that university expansion and "massification" can ultimately become disintegrative rather then cohesive of national identity, dysfunctional rather than functional.

In this context, how is it that the legitimacy of the higher education institution has been so well preserved (at least as indicated by the accelerating numbers of persons who seek admissions; see Figure 1, below). Conversely, why has meaningful reform of the system proved so elusive (see Epstein 1982). "Symbolic configurations" or "myths" lie at the nexus of state-society relations, Joel Migdal (1988, p. 26) emphasizes. What has promulgated the public mythologies necessary for continued massification? One explanation for the persistence of massifcation ideologies may be that graduates of mass secondary systems are self-selected. So, too, are students applying, entering, and graduating from mass universities.

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Students successfully completing their university may actually have lower expectations than very poor or ethnic minority students who - despite their great expectations from university education - are unable to attend or finish due to their inability to pay the direct costs) To explore this possibility, in the present article I examine university images among boys from the Peruvian highlands. I focus on three influences on their expectations of future earnings: information access, secondary school achievement, and indigenous status as indicated by language use. Using a survey of boys who finished secondary schools in urban and rural Cusco - Peru's most populous highland departamento, and the capital of it's pre-hispanic Inca empire - I then analyze the determinants of students' expectations of university salaries. Boys speaking Quechua in their homes, as opposed to Spanish, expect greater university salaries, I find. In reality, Quechua graduates typically earn much lower salaries. At the same time, access to newspapers among Quechua speakers is negatively correlated with their expectations: more frequent newspaper readers have lower (and more realistic) expectations. Among Spanish speakers, high-achieving students expect higher university salaries (which were more realistic in terms of actual urban salaries for graduates). Among Quechua speakers, high-achieving students also have more realistic university salary estimates. But, by contrast with Spanish-speakers, for Quechua speakers this greater realism among the better students implied lower estimates.

1. Cusco: the institutional and economic context of university demand

Peru attempted numerous radical reforms during the period of its nationalist military government (1968-1980), all aimed at fostering greater social integration, national consciousness, and equality. Many of the laws instituted by decree actually resulted from greater consultation and rational planning than the laws passed legislatively during periods of civilian government. Some were chiefly symbolic in their consequences: Coca Cola was replaced by "Inca Cola"; Quechua became a second official language. Beneath the symbolism, however,, was a far-reaching project which included the nationalization of foreign companies (not only of Coca Cola, but the U.S.-owned International Petroleum Company); a radical agrarian reform; and, in 1972, a sweeping restructuring of the education system (for contemporaneous English-language reviews see Cleaves 1977; Gall 1974; Drysdale and Myers 1975; for a discussion of Peruvian education prior to the reform see Paulston 1971; for retrospective appraisals of education policy see Epstein 1982; Stromquist 1986; and Post 1991a).

Among young people growing up near the Inca capital, Cusco, the effects of the educational reform promised to be sweeping. At both primary and secondary levels, education became more comprehensive and less diversified. Control over the operation of schooling was decentralized and, for the first time, vested in local councils (called "nucleos"). Texts in Peruvian history were revised, highlighting the contributions of indigenous culture, and heroizing Indian rebels against Spanish authority such as Tupac Amaru. One explicit goal of the curriculum was to build a

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new concept of what it meant to be Peruvian, by validating non-creole aspects of the national culture. Bilingual programs at the primary level were instituted in order to insure that Quechua-speakers would not be left behind. Coeducation was also promulgated in most schools. And, although some diversity of function was preserved at the secondary level, admission to the university level was in principle opened to all secondary students who could pass the entrance examinations set by each autonomously-governed institution.

The reasons for the education reform's failure to institutionalize lasting changes in the system have been widely debated. Battles with Maoist leaders of SUTEP, the largest teachers' union, undermined support at the grassroots level. Parents pressured schools to return to sex-segregated instruction in many of the more religiously conservative regions of Peru (including Cusco). Persistent recession since the mid-1970s, combined with continued high fertility, has steadily reduced Peru's per-capita income to levels of the 1950s. Because of the mounting interest on its foreign debt, domestic government spending per capita declined even more. Teacher salaries (currently hovering at about $ US 50/month), and conditions in most classrooms, noticeably worsened. No mass-support for bilingual education ever developed, even among indigenous parents, who were most eager for their children to obtain the skills to function in a criollo culture which they still regarded as "mainstream." Credential inflation impelled most secondary students to seek university admission over vocational education alternatives, and universities were happy to receive larger numbers since this increased their own negotiating power with the government. Under the military government, administration and policy for all of Peru's universities, private as well as public, had been rationalized in a governing council. Since the return to civilian rule in 1980, the council has become ever more loosely integrated, diminishing in role to a largely symbolic assembly of university rectors. 4

By the mid-1980s the situation for graduates of Cusco secondary schools was bleak. The administration of Peru's first civilian government had failed to stimulate the economy, and few formal sector job opportunities existed for persons without postsecondary education (and the economy would soon worsen considerably under the Alan Garcia government). For boys, the major alternative to further study was service in the armed forces. Fewer than 10 percent of respondents to a survey of area secondary students stated an intention of working after their graduation. Only 15 percent of Cusco-area boys intended to sit immediately for a university entrance examination, however. For most boys, the quality education received at the secondary level was insufficient to pass the competitive university entrance examination. Therefore, a huge, unregulated informal-sector network of year-long entrepreneurial preparatory schools (called "academias") had emerged. It was standard practice for most boys seeking university admission to study at least one year, and frequently longer, in an academia. This was the intention of 35 percent of the male secondary graduates in my sample.

The higher education institution of choice (by over half of all Cusco-area boys sampled) was the Universidad Nacional San Antonio Abad. One of the first higher education institutions in all Latin America, San Antonio Abad was founded under

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royal charter in 1692. Until the 1960s San Antonio, like most Peruvian universities, was more of a finishing school for local elites than a diffuser of knowledge or skills to the society at large. In terms of social mobility, it is doubtful that San Antonio ever provided large-scale opportunities for the masses of the departamento's youth. Prior to the 1960s, only a small minority of each cohort even received education at the secondary level. Fewer still sought university instruction. This is no longer the case. To illustrate the evolution of the demand for admission to San Antonio Abad, Figure 1 presents the total number of applications from 1960 to 1990. As can be appreciated, they have been rising exponentially over the period.

"O

0

=

E e-

20 . population aged 18

loJ 5 ~ applications

to the U.N. _- ~ San Antonio Abad

0 i i = =

1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990

(Sources: population estimates calculated from 1981 census; applications from Asamblea Nacional de Rectores, Boletin No. 10)

Fig. 1. Demand for universi ty entrance.

The number of applications includes persons repeatedly attempting the examination as well as persons originating outside of the departamento of Cusco. The number represents total applications, not local applicants. 5 Nevertheless, to have some reference point, it is instructive to compare the rising social demand for San Antonio entrance with the size of one relevant population cohort. This also appears in Figure 1. By way of comparisons, in 1960 the number of applications was merely 10 percent of the total number of the area's 18-year-old youth. By 1975, applications had risen to one-third of the cohort size; by 1990, to 100 percent. The rising demand for entrance to San Antonio Abad is not exceptional in Peru. For every university, especially the public or "national" universities, one finds nearly the same pattern (Post 1991a). Parallel with the rising application rates there was also a rapid expansion in participation rates. Though this expansion was not so steep as in the rise of applications, it was more than enough to transform Peru's national universities from elite to mass institutions. Today, San Antonio is thoroughly populist (or "popular"). While massification is viewed with alarm by

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many academicians, the view is not one of unmitigated despair. On the positive side, as the leading social historian of the region has written, San Antonio Abad can now be seen as the "great equalizer of Cusco society." (Tamayo Herrera 1981, p.250).

San Antonio is viewed as an equalizer by the general public, as well. This view is no doubt justified in the sense that San Antonio now provides credentials both to urban elites and rural campesinos, to youth of criollo as well as indigenous backgrounds. However, there is an important respect in which university attendance is n o t equalizing. Peru's universities are not equalizing in the market benefits, i.e., the economic returns, they confer to students from urban versus rural areas, or of criollo as opposed to indigenous origin. In both 1985 and 1991, national surveys discovered considerable differences in the economic returns as well as the mean starting salaries that were received by university graduates, differences corresponding to rural or urban residence and to Quechua as opposed to Spanish language use. Table 1 presents the conditional means of starting salaries for Peruvian males, which have been calculated from wage and earnings regressions using living standards measurement survey data from 1985 and 1991.

Table 1. Estimated mean monthly earnings of Peruvian men age 22, with secondary and university attainment.

Secondary University Percent attainment attainment of Sec.

Workers in rural areas of Peru, 1985" 485 Workers in urban areas other than Lima, 1985 567 Speakers of indigenous languages, 1991"* 50 Workers speaking Spanish, 1991 69

956 197% 1119 197%

83 166% 116 168%

"1985 amounts are for Inti, deflated to June 1985. *'1991 amounts are millions of "new soles", October 1991. Sources: Estimates for 1985 are calculated from the private sector wage regressions of Stelcner et aL (1988), Table 1. Estimates for 1991 are calculated from the earnings regressions of Psacharopoulos and Patrinos (1993), Table 25.

In 1985, no information on language use was solicited by the survey. However, Stelcner e t al . (1988) included residence in rural areas and other urban areas in their equations (the omitted category was residence in Lima). Not surprisingly, the effects of residing in each of these areas was negative, as compared with residence in Peru's capital. A workers' rural residence (known to be highly correlated with indigenous background) has an especially great effect in lowering their wages, with or without university education. Assuming a forty-hour work week, Table 1 presents the estimated mean earnings for men, aged 22, with secondary and university education. These means are calculated both for residents in cities such as Cusco and for rural areas of Peru. Because the country experienced hyper-inflation

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over the course of the year the first survey was fielded, Stelcner et al. deflated the 1985 estimates to one particular month. The monthly earnings in Table 1 for 1985 are expressed in Inti for the month of June. As can be seen in Table 1, workers with a university education at age 22 earned nearly twice (197%) what workers earned with only secondary school. At the same time, all workers in urban areas earned more than men in rural areas.

In 1991, perhaps for the first time in a national survey, respondents were asked to identify their usual language of communication. The options given to respondents were exclusionary, in that persons choosing an indigenous language could not simultaneously choose Spanish. Nevertheless, 11.3 percent of respondents identified their main language as either Quechua or Aymara. From these respondents, Psacharopoulos and Patrinos (1993) calculated earnings functions for indigenous versus Spanish language workers. Among men speaking an indigenous language in 1991, evidence of any economic benefit at all was found only for university-educated workers. Although the retums to education were also low among Spanish-language workers, for each level of education the returns were higher than among workers of indigenous backgrounds. Popular images notwithstanding, in this sense higher education appears to be disequalizing rather than equalizing. That is, given less education for all there would be smaller differences between the eamings of Spanish and Quechua speakers.

We can use the regression estimates to predict average starting salaries for a man, age 22, with secondary education and with university. The results, shown in Table 1, indicate that at each level of education there are large differences in the monthly earnings between persons of indigenous versus non-indigenous backgrounds. Due to hyper-inflation, the predicted 1991 monthly earnings, seen in Table 1, cannot be compared with those for workers in 1985. One comparison that can be made, however, is in the percentage of earnings for men having attained university as opposed to only secondary education. In 1985, workers with a university education earned 196 percent of the earnings that were received by secondary school graduates. In 1991 persons with university education earned only 167 percent of secondary school graduate earnings. Overall, in both language groups, Psacharopoulos and Patrinos discovered lower returns to education than had been found using the survey data from 1985. 6 Importantly, although the starting salaries earned by indigenous-language university graduates are lower than those received by Spanish-language graduates, the eamings differentials for university as opposed to secondary education are nearly identical in each group. This apparent anomaly is explained by the fact that, among indigenous workers, there was no monetary benefit (i.e., insignificant retums) to having only secondary education. Workers of criollo background with secondary schooling received higher earnings than did criollo background workers who attained only primary school, it was found by Psacharopoulos and Patrinos. By contrast, secondary school graduates of indigenous background received the same average earnings as did the children who stopped after the primary level, unless they then continued on to receive university education. Therefore, despite the lower returns to university education for indigenous Peruvians, the relative, or marginal benefit, is no different among

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indigenous and criollo background men: about 67 percent more money each month than workers who had only a secondary school education.

2. Theory and findings in educational decision research

This, then, so far as any survey is able to determine, was the labor market "reality" facing Cusco's indigenous and criollo secondary school students. How did they form their images of the higher education system and its rewards? Several different research literatures address this question (for a comprehensive review, see Craig 1981). One common approach focuses not on the student but on the socializing function of the school. It assumes the official curriculum succeeds in an attempt to process students politically (Alberti et al. 1974; Bowles and Gintis 1976; Portocarrero and Oliart 1989). As part of their political socialization, secondary schools are assumed to transmit positive images of higher education, but negative images of those who "fail" to attain it. Students unable to continue will understand that responsibility rests squarely on their shoulders, and will consequently blame themselves rather than the system. A variant focuses on student culture, autonomously constructed in opposition to school socialization, whereby students who are assumed to be unable to continue to universities consequently devalue it (but value their own culture). A case in point is Willis' (1977) English working class "lads".

A second approach to the image of higher education focuses more narrowly on students' individual psyches, and relates the images of postsecondary alternatives to students' images of themselves and their own futures. A theory of cognitive dissonance (Festinger 1957) can be applied to career preference, if we assume that students adapt their preferences to their expected options. Students forced to forego higher education may experience a feeling of "sour grapes" (Elster 1982), and revise downward their expectations of higher education. Such adaptive preference formation has been used to explore student decisions and images in Italy, for example (Gambetta 1987).

Still another approach supposes individuals' choices and images to be interdependent (Schelling 1978). The consequences an individual perceives from university attendance are presumably produced not only by one's perceptions of higher education, but also by one's perceptions about the behavior of other individuals, i.e., whether or not others plan to attend university. Boudon (1982) used such a game theoretical approach to explain the failure of technical postsecondary education in France. The debate among economists over whether universities are pursued because they endow students with human capital or with credentials is, in one sense, a debate over whether the interdependence of educational choice is primary or secondary to decision making. If it is primary, if students' preferences for higher education rest mainly on the perceived preferences of others, then collectively "sub-optimal" solutions to the game may result which are nevertheless rational for the individual. 7

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One approach seems particularly interesting to me because of its simplicity and small number of assumptions: images of higher education are based on exposure to it. Children of university-educated parents are in daily contact with the effects of higher education. So, too, are children living in a university town. Students whose mother tongue is the language of university instruction are more likely to be knowledgeable about universities. In this view information - consisting of the messages communicated by various media - determines knowledge. The fact that huge differences exist in the images young people carry about higher education can be attributed to their differential exposure to it, in other words to the fact that information is never "free". Forced to make hard choices about their careers, secondary school students rely on the information at hand to form an image of their altematives. It would be impossible (because it would require too much time) for anyone to become perfectly informed about the effects of university attendance?

Two examples, one from Japan and the other from Peru, suggest that focusing on university exposure and information may be fruitful in explaining student's images of higher education. In a survey of boys in Japanese urban and rural secondary schools, Bowman (1982) questioned students about the earnings they expected at various points in their careers. Students who decided to sit for university entrance exams expected the greatest increase in earnings over their lifetimes. Bowman found that boys from farm backgrounds, and who planned to go to university, had exceptionally high expectations of their future salaries after university. Because the retums to Japanese postsecondary education fell during the decade prior to Bowman's survey, it is likely that boys from rural areas had fewer links with the informal information network that would have yielded up-to-date estimates of university salaries. In Peru, Versluis (1974) similarly surveyed secondary students about their images of university, and its benefit to them in the labor market. Respondents were asked how difficult they believed it would be to find a job after completing their secondary school, and how difficult it would be supposing that they had a university degree. The distribution of responses was strongly associated with respondents' socio-economic status. Compared with upper-income respondents, the students from lower-income families were much more likely to believe it would be very easy to obtain work as university graduates. As in Bowman's Japanese study, this result might be explained if we suppose that higher income students are more likely to have university-educated parents and friends who could inform the student of the slim opportunities in Peru's deteriorating labor market, even for university graduates. In the present article, in order to explore further the nature of Cusco students' images of the university, I will consider three key indicators of exposure to higher education information: indigeneity and language, academic success, and access to news media.

3. The meaning of indigeneity in the calculus of higher education

Latin American social researchers have long scrutinized the relationships between indigenous and mestizo (in Peru known as "criollo") cultures and

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economies. As in North America, Europe, and such ethnically pluralist Asian societies as India and Malaysia, in Latin America, too, the higher education system is widely seen to be both the bearer and legitimizer of the dominant (criollo) cultural heritage, and the gateway to the formal economic sector. However, unlike research in other regions of the world, educational inquiry into the relation between the indigenous and the criollo can only very approximately be translated into the discourse heard elsewhere over "ethnicity" in education (see Epstein 1982, p. 284). In Latin America, and particularly in the Andean region, ethnicity per se concerns researchers far less than does the legacy of pre-European civilization, i.e., the indigenous. In Peru, persons across a broad spectrum of complexion and physique can all be regarded as "criollo". The term includes varying degrees of African or Chinese or European heritage, or their combination. The meaning of indigeneity is quite different from, e.g., North American understandings of minority groups in education. For in Peru, at least since Manuel Gonzalez Prada, national identity itself has been seen as contested rather than purely as the result of unilateral domination or cultural hegemony. The subjugation of indigenous Peru, wrote Manuel Gonzalez Prada in 1904, would not end merely with a criollo education. To Gonzalez Prada the significance of being an Indian was primordial rather than socially constructed, contrary to his contemporary, Emile Durkheim. Therefore, the social reforms represented by expanding criollo education could never help the Indian. Rather, power and material resources were the basis for an autonomous development: "To those who say: school, respond: school and bread" (Gonzalez Prada 1981 [1904], p. 48). In the view of Gonzalez Prada and other proponents of indigenismo, being Indian was not an acquired status, nor could it be easily lost. As Luis Vacarcel put it: "the Indian dressed as a European, speaking English, thinking as a westemer, does not lose his spirit" (Valcarcel 1981 [1927], p. 117). Historical materialist interpreters agreed, at least to a point, with the proponents of indigenismo. The founder of Peru's socialist party, Jose Carlos Mariategui, viewed the conceptual collapse of indigeneity into "an ethnic problem" as simply "another in the worn-out repertoire of imperialist ideas" (Mariategui 1968 [1928], p. 34).

Despite the legacy of Vacarcel and others, more recent treatments of indigeneity do tend to treat it as epiphenomenal, and as a manifestation of one's class and position in the economic structure. Where indigeneity is discussed explicitly in contemporary Peru, it is often treated as a linguistic obstacle in the path of education for rural development (see the synthesis by Alberti et al. on this subject, 1974). And, although Peru symbolically declared itself bilingual in 1975, during a period of nationalist military rule, the little research being conducted on language is done primarily by foreigners, many associated with the Bible translators attached to the Summer Institute of Linguistics. From outside Peru, some observers have studied the educational inequality so prevalent between the "ethnic groups" of Quechua as opposed to Spanish Cuzquefios (e.g., Van den Berghe and Primov 1977). In Peru, however, as the influence of indigenist thought fades, few researchers even include language as an explanatory variable, much less as a primordial category. Conspicuous by its very absence is any solid evidence of the

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number of Peruvians who regularly speak indigenous languages today. Language use was not questioned in more than a small sub-sample in the 1981 census, and does not appear at all most national surveys. The most ambitious exploration of education's impact on national identity (Portocarrero and Oliart 1989, p. 122), searched in vain for relationships between social class, education, and students' views of indigenous culture.

"The most surprising finding is the consensus among youths from different social classes,"

they were forced to conclude. Although their survey instrument asked respondents for detailed information about their families, Portocarrero and Oliart never even questioned students about their home language - an indicator of indigenous culture (for a review see Post 1991b).

How might one 's indigenous heritage - as indicated by knowledge of Quechua in addition to Spanish - affect one 's image of higher education? Functionalist views, which emphasize the role of education in stabilizing a cohesive society, have dominated most approaches to the question. In Peru, the leading intellectuals associated with the Instituto de Estudios Peruanos concluded twenty years ago that schooling necessarily legitimizes the status quo. Anticipating the work of Bowles and Gintis in the U.S.A., Alberti et al. (1974, p. 14) wrote that,

so long as the traditional political system has full control, the educational system legitimatize the status quo and prepares individuals ideologically, motivationally, and technically to assume the roles required for maintaining the political system.

In a similar vein, one prominent outside observer also opined that,

In Pent schooling expanded without indl~strialization, almost purely as a mechanism of social control in a period of potential conflict which would have been disastrous for the ruling class. Peru's elite looked to schooling to incorporate indigenous populations into the lowest level of the occupational structure and to preserve the dependent capitalist system (Carnoy 1974, p. 352).

Such deterministic views are consonant with neo-classical economic approaches to higher education and indigeneity. Because higher education has, in fact, operated using the language of Peru's criollo rather than indigenous peoples (Spanish rather than Quechua or Aymara), attaining higher education would be more difficult (or "costly") for persons of indigenous background. Nor would the monetary returns to higher education be identical for each group: the benefits of higher education would indeed accrue more readily to persons who are predisposed to absorb the human capital which is specific to the criollo institution of the university. For both of these reasons, indigenous peoples should tend to expect comparatively low benefits from

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a university education. These lowered expectations could then serve, in functionalist terms, to "cool out" the desire for more education by the indigenous groups. And deflated indigenous images of higher education could thus lead to greater stability in the supply of persons with higher education who could challenge the status quo.

4. "Social mobilization", newspapers, and information about university

In the literature on political development, the transformation of agrarian societies is accompanied by the substitution of national for communal attachments. This entails expanded contacts with the outside world through the mass media. Deutsch (1961, p. 501) proposed that exposure to mass media thus constituted part of the "social mobilization" of peasants as the political development of oligarchies proceeded. But this mobilizing process, he noted, does not invariably lead to political development:

Rapid social mobilization may be expected .. to promote the consolidation of states whose peoples already share the same language, culture, and major social institutions; while the same process may tend to strain or destroy the unity of states whose population is already divided into several groups with different languages or cultures or basic ways of life.

Already by the late 1950s, observers such as Bourricaud (1970, pp. 63-64) had seen the massification of the Peruvian university as a symptom of the accelerating rural/urban migration, and of the emergence of the middle class as a participant in the political process. The 1950s urban immigrants saw benefits from participation in a society still dominated by an oligarchy, according to Bourricaud, due in large measure to their shared ownership of institutions such as education. The mass media, in this view, should communicate positive images of educational participation if they are to contribute to a unified national identity transcending the disparate circumstances of the indigenous and criollo populations. Cusco academicians such as Tamayo Herrera - in calling the university a "great equalizer" - implicitly view the sharing of the social institution of education as a countervailing force to the social mobilization overtaking the traditional Cuzquefio divisions of the indigenous and criollo population; mass media might otherwise tend to create a more fragmented, balkanized identity.

In the economics of education literature, exposure to news media is similarly important, but for students as individuals rather than, as for Deutsch or Bourricaud, urban immigrants as a class. Viewed as rational maximizers of their own future utility, students from indigenous backgrounds choose to participate in the higher education system because of the benefits it is believed to offer them and their families. It is often assumed that the prevailing costs and benefits from higher education form the basis for students' perceptions of universities. Yet the subjective expectations of the university returns (which some economists call "ex ante

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expectations") have seldom been scrutinized. Smith and Powell (1990) examined the reasons that American students might inflate their own future university salaries, as opposed to their predictions for their peers, and provide a literature review of reference group theory and the social psychology of personal expectations. Theoretical treatments of information in decision-making are too numerous to cite (for a review of those related to educational choice, see Catsiapis 1987). Empirical investigations of perceptions of university costs, as distinct from benefits, exist in the U.S. (G.A.O. 1990) The Council for the Advancement and Support of Education found that American high school students generally had inflated estimates of university fees (C.A.S.E. 1988). The sources of these inflated estimates may relate to information access, particularly to the home language of the student. In one study, students speaking Spanish as opposed to English in the home were the most misinformed about postsecondary costs, even within the ethnic group of Latino youth, and after controlling for other differences in family background (Post 1990b).

Research on students' expected benefits is practically non-existent outside the U.S. There has been a widely-held assumption in the field of higher education that student perceptions are irrelevant because expectations necessarily mirror the "true" returns to education. Psacharopolous (1982) noted the unrealistically high expectations of Portuguese secondary students. However, he was skeptical about systematic bias in the diffusion of knowledge of the returns to higher education, contending, in these pages, that "signals are fairly well and automatically transmitted by the informal social network" (Psacharopolous 1981, p. 470).

To test the effectiveness of the "social network" in instantaneously transmitting information about the returns to university education, a small case study in coastal Peru used frequency of reading newspapers as a proxy for information access generally. The finding was that students with more access to newspapers had lower expectations of the returns to education (Post 1985).

What does the frequency of reading newspapers mean in contemporary Peru? What is its significance among the criollo and indigenous populations? When the effects of family income and indigeneity are simultaneously controlled, then reading newspapers may reflect a student's curiosity and sensitivity to the world beyond his immediate surroundings. Even more than exposure to other mass media such as television or radio, reading a newspaper is a voluntary action. In Cusco, despite a large population of Quechua speakers, all daily newspapers are Spanish- language. Therefore, the frequency of reading a newspaper reflects a student's participation in the criollo vernacular, and indicates the social "mobilization" Deutsch had identified with the process of political development. But, in addition, reading a newspaper is far more than symbolic: newspapers convey information for job seekers, since work in the economy's formal sector is often advertised. And conditions in Cusco's Universidad Nacional San Antonio Abad - frequently closed for months due to student or faculty strikes - would be covered through local news. Such information would otherwise be unlikely to reach students from less-educated families, living in rural areas of Cusco, or of indigenous backgrounds.

Because students outside the urban, criollo, social center of Cusco are

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particularly deficient in information about the formal economic sector, we should anticipate different effects of information access in the Quechua as opposed to Spanish-speaking populations. Among boys who speak Quechua, reading a newspaper might affect expectations far more. Whereas Spanish-speakers already have other sources of information about the returns to university education, boys speaking Quechua may not. A study in Puno (the region adjacent to Cusco) should be noted in this regard. Epstein (1971) examined secondary student's evaluations of indigenous culture and criollo culture. Epstein found that rural students - those with closest ties to the informal economy and indigenous culture - were the most accepting of the need to assimilate and adopt criollo customs. It is likely that this acceptance was linked to the desire for further, postsecondary study. Subsequently, reviewing the reasons for the failure of Peru's educational reform to permeate deeply into Peruvian society, Epstein (1982, pp. 294-95) cites the isolation of the Andean communities as an important factor, and concludes that,

given their isolation, it is easier for children living in remote areas to accept the myths about mestizo society promoted by schools than for those living in towns, who are exposed to the realities of the mestizo way of life. Thus children, and presumably their parents, living in isolated, more traditional, and culturally homogeneous areas tend to be more naive about the outside world.

5. Grades in Peruvian history: cultural hegemony or economic information?

School performance, as indicated in student's self-reported grades in Peruvian history, is often taken by theorists to indicate the success of the system in assimilating and integrating students into the dominant status hierarchy. In this view, performance by students indicates their ability to conform to the expectations set by teachers and the curriculum. Put more critically, school success in a society of contested national identity - particularly in subjects like national history - can be seen as a process of cultural "hegemony", to use the Gramscian term. By learning the official historical information which is embodied in the national curriculum of the Peruvian past, students demonstrate the degree to which they become members of the larger society, and internalize the national identity. Rather than identifying themselves primarily as members of a region, or an exploited class, or an ethnic group which has been brutally repressed or marginalized throughout most of the country's history, the national curriculum in history tends - in the words of two prominent Peruvian sociologists of education - "to form a WE" (Portocarrero and Oliart 1989, p. 13). Where national curricula are successful, they substitute centrally planned categories of identification for those arising due to local experience as structured by non-state institutions (e.g., the church, the kinship system, the occupational niche, etc.). Under this interpretation, "success" in a school subject like national history implies an acknowledgement of the national education system itself. Good students in Peruvian history will be more likely to expect rewards from the education system, specifically the higher education system. In a context where boys are primarily interested in the monetary benefits

285

from education, this interpretation would lead us to hypothesize that students who receive higher grades in Peruvian history will also tend to expect higher earnings as a result of their continuing to the national university. This positive effect of grades on expected benefits - on students' faith in the system - should be most pronounced in the marginalized indigenous population, those whose home language is Quechua rather than Spanish. To the extent that cultural hegemony is successful among this group, students would believe education to confer further success, specifically in terms of their own incomes.

An alternative interpretation of academic success would relate grades, not to cultural hegemony, but to the formal economy. Cusco, at the time of the 1985 survey and since, has maintained dual formal/nonformal economies. These dualities historically have represented divergent activities for its population. For the indigenous population, subsistence agriculture and animal-breeding have been the traditional activities. The market economy of the urban center - the city of Cusco - represents the alternative. As the market permeated local and traditional types of production activities, it linked all Cuzquefios, rural as well as urban, to the national and world economies which lay beyond the horizons of local experience as lived by the Quechua-speakers. When the economic recession of the 1980s deepened, however, options outside of the formal economy evaporated. Better students probably learn, in the process of learning Peruvian history, about their own options in the formal economy. Given that most Quechua-speaking youth come from parents with little formal education, the provision of information from the school itself may be critically important in terms of guiding boys to realistic expectations. In this interpretation, then, schools impart not "false consciousness" but true information. Following from this view, one would hypothesize that better students in the subject of Peruvian history have more realistic images of the formal economy. For Quechua-speaking boys, with fewer information outlets outside of the school, the effects of school information could be particularly important. Empirical research on the effects of schooling itself for student perceptions are rare in Peru. A study in Puno by Hornberger (1989) confirmed there was greater support among parents for developing criollo skills and Spanish competence than for the maintenance of Quechua ability. While Epstein (1971) had interpreted his findings in terms of cultural colonialism, it is also likely that the more self-selected population of rural students had, by the end of secondary school, learned that the monetary benefits of the national economy were eclipsing the local opportunities for production in the traditional, non-market economy. Whether success in the official curriculum of Peru's education system is associated with faith in its efficacy, or with information about the formal economy, remains a question for empirical investigation.

6. Data, methods, and results

In the context of a larger study of the demand for higher education, a random sample of nine private and public secondary schools was selected in the city of

286

Cusco. In addition, every secondary school - private or public - was targeted that was situated within a two hour radius of the city (seven additional secondary schools). In June of 1985, I visited each of these fifteen secondary schools with a survey instrument that I developed with Peru's national institute of educational research. Because of overcrowding, Peru's schools typically operate on triple sessions ("turnos") to maximize the use of space. I consistently visited each school during the morning session. In the city of Cusco, I further sampled two classes of fifth-year students in each school. These students were in their final year of secondary education, and were in the process of deciding whether or not to attempt further study at the postsecondary level. In their classes, students completed questionnaires regarding their future plans, their family backgrounds, and the monthly earnings they expected they would receive with and without a university degree. There were a total of 515 male respondents. I then estimated regressions on the expectations boys had of their future monthly earnings with a university education, l~

As one independent variable, I used the earnings boys expected to receive wi thou t university. In addition, I included monthly earnings of the boy's father (also self-reported). Consistent with prior research on student expectations (Smith and Powell 1990), I anticipated positive effects of father's earnings on son's expected earnings. Such a result should also be anticipated due to the numerous studies showing that, in fact, children do "inherit" higher earnings from higher income parents. Even in comparatively open societies, inequality is transmitted through the generations. In Peru, Stelcner et al. (1988, p. 26) noted positive effects of parents' education on sons' earnings that were, in some equations, larger than the effects of the child's o w n education. As indicators of exposure to university, and of student's information, I included as independent variables the frequency the student reported reading a newspaper each week and the boy's language (speaks at least some Quechua, or not). Finally, I also calculated the effect of the student's (self-reported) grades in Peruvian history. Peruvian students are graded on a 1-20 scale, and I standardized grades across schools as standard deviations from the mean for each school (i.e., in Z-scores).

Table 2 presents the regression results. As anticipated, in all samples a boy's estimate of his future earnings as a high school graduate was significantly determinant of his expectations of income as a university graduate. Two explanations are equally possible for this correlation. First, personal optimism and self-confidence operate on salary expectations: some individuals are more confident than others of their ability to obtain high-paying employment. This would make them likely to expect higher earnings with both secondary as well as university education. Another reason stems from the chaotic price environment of contemporary Peru. With triple digit inflation, respondents to the survey must have had only vague ideas of current salaries at any educational level. For both of these reasons, including secondary school estimates in the equation is necessary to dampen the "noise" of personal optimism and hyper-inflation in university estimates.

Father's monthly earnings were a significant determinant of estimated university

287

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288

salaries. As already mentioned, part of the reason for this is simply that an individual's earnings are partly determined by their father's income. In addition, the effects of hyper-inflation makes the reporting of fathers' salaries another "index" of student perceptions of the value of money.

The indicators of exposure to the mainstream, criollo culture and formal economy are all significant in the total sample. Reading newspapers was entered as a quadratic term (news-squared) in addition to the frequency per week of reading. The significance of both the frequency and the quadratic term shows that the negative effect of exposure to the news media is greatest among those who have least access. Put another way, with more frequent exposure there is a diminishing impact of newspapers. Simply being of Quechua language background was associated with higher estimates of university salaries, the regression results also show. Interestingly, grades in Peruvian history had different effects among Quechua and Spanish language boys, as seen by the significance of the interaction term.

To provide more insight into the processes at work, the sample was divided by students' linguistic backgrounds. Two models were then estimated in each sub- sample. The effects of reading newspapers and of achievement in Peruvian history were calculated separately. Among Quecha-speakers, there is a significantly negative effect of grades on the student's estimate of their salary as a university graduate: higher achievement led to lower expectations. By contrast, among Spanish-language boys the effect of grades was positive: better students anticipated higher salaries. Reading newspapers also had different effects among Quechua as opposed to Spanish language boys. For boys speaking Quechua, there were significant effects of both the frequency and the quadratic term for newspaper reading. The dampening effect of news is most pronounced among those who read least of all. By contrast, among Spanish language boys the effect of newspaper reading is negligible.

It is easier to interpret the results of the analysis by using the coefficients in Table 2 to plot conditional means of expected university salaries. Other things being equal, the effects of reading newspapers and of history grades among Quechua and Spanish language boys are presented in Figure 2. Figure 2a shows the effect of newspapers; Figure 2b illustrates the effect of history grades. It would be interesting to know the mean starting salaries for Quechua and Spanish language university graduates at the time of the survey. Such data would allow us to gauge the realism of indigenous and criollo background boys, as well as to interpret the indicators of exposure to university. Unfortunately, no data exist which would allow us to make this comparison. The next best information is available, however. Being of indigenous background is highly correlated with rural residence, which was reported in the 1985 survey. Table 1 presents the mean starting salaries, in Inti of June 1985, for workers in rural as well as urban areas other than Lima. Both of these means are also displayed in Figure 2, along with the students' subjective expectations of the mean.

Overall, boys had realistic estimates of the mean university salaries prevailing at the time of the survey, especially boys of criollo backgrounds (who tended to reside

289

2a. Days/week student reads news 2b. History grades (in Z-scores)

1300'

ca �9 1200

~ 11oo. moo ',~o~ 1000

_0 9oo,

o. ~ 800

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Qu~hua s~akers' expe~ations

700

of monthly salary with university education

"1300

"1200

-1100

"true" mean ~ " 1000 in urban area . . . . . . _ _ _ . . . . . . _ . . . . . . _ _ _ _ _ . 9 0 0

. . . . . . . . . ~ "800 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . "true" mean

in rural areas 700 -1.o -0'.5 olo ols 1.o

======, Spanish speakers' expectations of monthly salary with university education

Fig. 2. Effects of newspapers and history grades on salary expected with university education.

in urban areas). But it is also clear that Quechua-speakers overestimated the salaries earned by university graduates. Quechua-speakers tended to have more accurate expectations when they had greater access to newspapers. Boys who were of indigenous backgrounds and who received poor grades in Peruvian history had similarly inflated expectations of university salaries. Quechua-speakers who fared better in history had lower, more realistic estimates. By sharp contrast, Spanish- speakers with poorer history grades had lower expectations.

The 1991 estimates of starting salaries by language group are also illuminating. Because of hyper-inflation, and the fact that Peru changed its monetary system since 1985, the 1991 sums reported in Table 1 for Spanish and Indigenous speakers cannot be directly compared with the expectations that students expressed in terms of 1985 monetary units. But the ratio of university/secondary school salary - real and expected - can be compared using the 1991 data. As Table 1 indicates, in 1991 university graduates generally earned starting salaries that were 167 percent of those received by secondary school graduates. The coefficients from Table 2 can be used to calculate the expected percentages of university/secondary earnings, supposing different values of newspaper exposure and history grades. These expected percentages are plotted in Figure 3. Figure 3a shows the percentage of secondary school salaries that students expected to earn, given various days of reading newspapers. Figure 3b illustrates the effect of history grades on the percentages expected. In both cases, the pattern is similar to that seen previously in Figure 2. With more frequent newspaper reading, Quechua speakers had more realistic expectations of the percentages they would receive with university. Better history students, in both language groups, also had more accurate images of the benefit of higher education. However, for Quechua speakers this entailed lower perceived benefits among the better students, while among Spanish speakers higher grades implied higher estimates.

290

3a. Day/week student reads news

o 225 ] ~

I \ 1 \

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"true" percentage for Spanish and

Quechua speakers

3b. History grades (in Z-scores)

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of monthly salary with university education of monthly salary with university education

�9 250

�9 225

"200

"175

�9

125

Fig. 3. Effects of newspapers and history grades on university salaries as percent of secondary salaries.

7. Discussion: through a glass darkly?

Prior to the 1968-80 military government, the majority of Peru's indigenous population was tied to an oligarchy, farming and animal herding without land tenure. Solidarity was stymied by the clientelistic relationships with the hacendados, it was argued by Cotler (1969), who further described the structure of rural society as a "baseless triangle": peasants were related to each other primarily through their subservient position in the hierarchy. At it's most successful, the military's agrarian reform was able to engender a greater sense of self-efficacy, greater faith in government, and reduced fatalism, among members (but not all workers) in the new agrarian cooperatives, as McClintock (1981) has shown. Parallel with this reform, the government has permitted the massification of higher education as a vent for social demand pressures. Although unsuccessful in raising productivity or reducing overall income inequality, massification in Peru may be seen to have at least one major benefit to each new government: education, rather than other more threatening alternatives, became the preferred route of social progress among the public. 11 The paradox of massification is how the legitimacy of the system is sustained when its benefits accrue so unequally to indigenous and non-indigenous participants.

In one sense, indigenous students viewed their options through a glass, darkly: absent many formal contacts with the criollo-dominated labor market for university graduates, their strategy for survival consisted of a mythical conception of life for persons with higher education. Migdal (1988, p. 27) emphasizes that,

[i]n stitching together strategies of survival, people use myths or symbols to help explain their place and prospects in an otherwise bewildering world... These strategies of survival, sewn from the symbols, rewards, and sanctions, are the roadmaps used to guide one through the maze of dally life, ensuring one's existence and, in rare instances, pointing the way toward upward mobility�9

291

At the same time, though myth is important for all, and all no doubt view the world through a glass, darkly, some lenses are also distorted by the social organization. ~2

Distortion in imagery - as distinct from mere obscurity or noise - is partly a consequence of Peru's falling returns to education, as well as the continued marginalization of its indigenous population. In past years of economic growth, the benefit to a university degree may actually have been as high as Quechua speakers believed at the time they were surveyed. Because the deterioration of Cusco's formal sector economy could not immediately become know to all, families having limited exposure to the university would have outdated images of its personal efficacy. Debates over the proper label for these distortions - "ideology" or "information" - can distract us from understanding the consequences of students' higher education images for the integration of Peruvian society through the national university. The collective identity that institutions such as San Antonio Abad help forge in the minds of Cusco residents depends in large part on its public image as a vehicle for upward mobility, i.e., on its perception as a "great equalizer" (Tamayo Herrera 1981, p. 250). This image has been sustained by the very social inequality that it is believed to level.

Results of my analysis shed additional light on the meanings of indigeneity, school achievement, and communications media in the formation of public images about higher education. Deterministic or functionalist explanation of the subjugation of indigenous peoples by "colonial" criollo institutions (such as San Antonio Abad) have been found seriously deficient. Far from dampening the expectations of the marginalized linguistic minority, the social network of Cusco kindles the (unrealistic) perception by Quechua speakers that higher education would be greatly beneficial to them in terms of income. Other things being equal, Quechua speakers expect significantly greater benefits from university than do Spanish speakers, and have higher estimates than appear warranted from what we know about current salaries or the marginal benefit of getting a university education. These images, among indigenous background boys, no doubt contributed to the exponential increase in the demand for university admission, as seen in Figure 1. The benefits imagined from university education decline rapidly if indigenous boys are even minimally connected with mass media, as represented by newspapers. Expectations also decline among Quechua speakers who receive better grades in the subject of Peruvian history. Indirectly, these two effects illuminate discussions of the meaning of school achievement and mass media. A theory of cultural hegemony would predict that exposure to media, and success in school, should have a positive influence on the images that students form about the benefits from participating in the higher education system. The dominant criollo culture would be well-served, in this interpretation, by official curricula about Peruvian history, and by Spanish-language news media. If this were the case, it is unlikely that increased school achievement and newspapers would have the dampening effect they have been shown to have among boys of indigenous background.

National universities are often seen as legitimate channels of social mobility for individuals, or of differentiation for society as a whole. When universities are imagined to operate equally for all, they can indirectly serve goals of nation

292

building and social integration, in addition to their missions of training and research. To sustain this image, universities must be seen both as open to all, and as rewarding all. When this is not the case, there a danger to the legit imacy of higher education as an institution. Students of indigenous background, having the greatest expectations of the economic benefit of university, could become bitterly disappointed if they receive lower salaries than they expected, or than is received by criollo background boys. This might even impel them to search for alternative avenues of gain, either for themselves as individuals or as a group. However, for such students to feel the disappointment personally, they would need to complete a university degree and search for employment. No evidence is available to explore the transitions of indigenous students as they continue through postsecondary education, unfortunately. However, it is highly unlikely that the indigenous students with most distorted and inflated images of the university would ever enter the university, much less complete it. As has been seen in this research, Quechua speakers with lower grades, and those rarely reading newspapers, overestimate the benefits of having a university education. But these are precisely the students who would be least l ikely to continue to the postsecondary level; not because they expect too little, but because they cannot afford to finance a year of study in an academia, or pass the entrance exams otherwise. And, as they begin their labor under the extraordinary hardship that governs rural society, they may wonder how much greater their income would have been if they had continued to university and, consequently, how much of their poverty must be blamed on their own failure to pursue higher education.

Acknowledgement

For suggestions and comments on earlier versions of this essay, I am grateful to Michael Apple, Daniel Levy, John Meyer, Rolland Paulston, Wil l iam Tierney, as well as two anonymous reviewers for this journal.

No~s

1. The gradual "cooling out" of American students (Clark 1960) was long ago noted as functional with regard to social integration in the U.S., and is no doubt essential in maintaining official commitments to the values that Toqueville earlier had found so pervasive in this country.

2. "Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun.... Or does it explode?," Hughes asked. 3. A second reason for the persistence of demand, of course, is that not all students who seek to enter

university are motivated primarily by its labor market benefit, and thus are not the rational "human capitalists" that economic theory holds them to be. Peruvian women, perhaps because they traditionally have not participated in the formal sector labor force to the same degree as men, appear to be far less motivated by the formal sector economic returns, although they aspire to university in the same proportions as men (Post 1990a).

4. The fact that, as currently constituted, the Asamblea Nacional de Rectores (A.N.R.) is more purely symbolic than its predecessor, the Consejo Nacional de Universidades Peruanas (C.O.N.U.P.), obviously does not mean that it is powerless or irrelevant. Alberto Fujimori, an agricultural

293

economist whose career trajectory took him from rector of the Peru's National Agrarian University to president of Peru, was president of the A.N.R. in 1988.

5. However, applicants had to be physically present in the remote highland city on the day of their entrance examination, and so it is likely that the vast majority of applications, charted in Figure 1, came from local young people. There was no limit on the number of times an applicant could sit for the entrance exam.

6. This may be a consequence of the rapid expansion of education and the devaluation of credentials at all levels. However, even leaving aside the numerous non-market motives for pursuit of university entrance, in 1991 higher education continued to present quite a rational choice in purely monetary terms. Although less beneficial than in past years, universities still conferred positive economic benefits (i.e., to the individual; social returns to Peru are, of course, another matter).

7. In the words of Lester Thurow (1972, p. 79), "higher education becomes valuable not because it would raise peoples incomes above what they would have been if no one had increased his education, but rather because it raises their income above what it will be if others acquire an education and they do not."

8. As the economist George Stigler (1961, p. 224) commented: "ignorance is like sub-zero weather: by a sufficient expenditure its effects on people can be kept within tolerable or even comfortable bounds, but it would be wholly uneconomic to eliminate all its effects." A sociological interpretation is given by Remi Clignet (1974, pp. 230-31): "As knowledge of the ropes becomes more important, there are accentuated variations in the distribution of the relevant information among the various subgroups of the population. Such variations reflect contrasts both in the nature and the extent of the formal and informal networks in which individuals participate. Hence, these variations are a result of differential placement in the social structure."

9. The acknowledgement by Mariategul of the indigenous, along side of class, made him a hero in the ideology of Sendero Luminoso, the messianic insurrection which borrowed its name from another of Mariategui's writings.

10. For the purposes of the present analysis, I selected only boys, since the "reality" of future salaries was available only for men in the 1991 survey. In addition, as discussed above (Note 3), Peruvian women appear to focus less on the monetary benefits of higher education when forming their plans~

11. Asked how Peru could resolve its many problems, a greater number of my respondents in 1985 chose "more education", 27 percent, than any other response (Post 1987).

12. As Migdal 1988, p. 27 adds, "Social control rests on the organizational ability to deliver key components for individuals' strategies of survival." This includes the delivery of images and symbols, such as that of the public university.

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