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Being Educated

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Becoming Middle Class
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Abstract

This chapter focuses on the social outcomes of higher education in Ethiopia which, in addition to financial improvement, changed many interlocutors’ relationships with others as they became ‘educated persons.’ This status was not merely related to the possession of university degrees, but to the ways in which their behaviours were transformed by experiences of other places and interactions with people from different backgrounds. The value of higher education differed between Addis Ababa and other locations due to variations in the number of graduates and employment opportunities available, and these differences made the social outcomes of higher education unpredictable. While individuals experienced a range of changes in their lives because of higher education, their opportunities for upward social mobility also depended on the contexts in which they found themselves.

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Correspondence to Markus Roos Breines .

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Breines, M.R. (2021). Being Educated. In: Becoming Middle Class. Globalization, Urbanization and Development in Africa . Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3537-3_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3537-3_4

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore

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