In addition to the political and economic systems of the country, the social system has been a major concern of the party and government ever since the BKP took power. Social restructuring has resulted in a system wherein the party elite occupies the highest level. This group is small and represents the apex of the social pyramid. The next level down, which is much broader, includes lesser party functionaries, professionals, administrators and managers, technicians, and all white-collar workers. The next level is made up of blue-collar industrial workers, who constitute the largest group in the society. At the bottom of the structure are the peasants. There are, of course, gradations of power, privilege, and prestige within all of the social groupings. The society has been very mobile since World War II with rapid upward mobility based mainly on the expanding economy, industrialization, and modernization. Toward the end of the 1960s, as the economic growth rate slowed, so also did the social mobility, and there was evidence that social groups were stabilizing. Education has been the key to upward mobility and, since coming to power, the Communists have given preference in educational opportunity to formerly underprivileged groups. At the beginning of the 1970s, however, the percentage of students of worker and peasant origin enrolled in institutions of higher learning was far below the percentage of workers and peasants in the population. Students from the lower income groups have not competed favorably against those from more advantaged backgrounds and, although upward mobility is not blocked, it has been becoming more difficult. Membership in the BKP remains important for persons desiring to move upward in the social structure. For the leadership the importance of education lies in the fact that it is the best means for orienting the people in the official ideology as well as for training the professionals, technicians, and skilled workers needed to run the country. The ideological indoctrination is pervasive throughout the entire school system, but the concurrent goal of meeting the needs of the economy has suffered because the system of higher education has not expanded rapidly enough to absorb most secondary school graduates who are desirous and capable of pursuing higher studies. Many educational reforms have been enacted over the years, but they have been cautious and limited and have not attacked the major problem of providing much greater funding for higher education.