Another principle of the educational system is the promotion of technical or vocational education and the simultaneous downgrading of the humanities. Academic studies were quantitatively reduced in order to place greater emphasis on practical work. When a student has completed his formal education in the school system, he will have at the time spent at least one-third of his school hours working on a farm, in a factory, or at some other enterprise. In the curriculum itself technical subjects are given a place of greater importance than the humanities. Although studies have indicated that a great many students seeking admission to institutions of higher education aspire to the study of the humanities, governmental policies have limited the number of places available in these areas in order to train technical-vocational specialists to meet the needs of the economy (see ch. 12). The last important principle of Bulgarian education is the nationalization and secularization of the school system. When the Communists took power in the 1940s, they quickly closed all foreign and private schools with the exception of schools for the children of Soviet officials and diplomats. Schools of ethnic minorities fell under the aegis of the government and thereby lost all autonomy. Ironically, in 1973 the only private school that existed was related to the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. As the church is subservient to and dependent upon the state, however, the existence of such a school undoubtedly represented little threat to the government. EDUCATIONAL REFORMS Between the years 1944 and 1948 the Communists set about eradicating the prewar educational system. By 1947, when the constitution (also called the Dimitrov Constitution) was enacted, all prewar textbooks had been replaced by communist texts; all schoolteachers and university professors who were considered reactionary or fascist had been replaced by persons loyal to the Fatherland Front (Otechestven Front) government; and all institutions of higher education had been opened to workers and their children, whereas students thought to have fascist or reactionary tendencies were denied admittance. The Dimitrov Constitution stipulated further that all schools, including those that had previously been private, would be the property of the state; that all foreign schools would be closed for the academic year 1948-49; and that religious schools would be discontinued. Ironically, the only denominational schools that were allowed to continue were those that trained priests, but these schools had to have special permission from the state in order to continue their operations.