Once the community transforms from a small rural village with little outside contact, to a more developed urban area with technological advancement allotting instantaneous communication with people from all over the world, the way that individuals perceive themselves is bound to change. Therefore, nationalism is not the result of primordial or dormant forces within a particular society, but it is the consequence of a new social order that is based upon "deeply internalized, education-dependent high cultures, each protected by its own state" . .
Gellner argues that cultural pluralism was viable until the effects of industrialization produced modern "high cultures", with literate and education-based methods of communication, which characterized identity in terms of nationality and culture. He states that ethnic pluralism functioned quite well throughout history in agrarian societies, but that the modern, industrial society demands cultural homogeneity .
The university has been a key element in forming one's identity through professional status, because it is a major step one takes before entering the professional realm of society. People of post-World War II Yugoslavia viewed the university as a vital factor in the construction of an advanced, industrialized society , because it could produce a skilled middle class of individuals who would allow the state to modernize. .
As many ethnic Albanians of Kosova transitioned from uneducated, rural peasants to educated, urban inhabitants in the 1970s, it follows that their identity changed respectively. .
In the case of ethnic Albanians in Macedonia, some were educated at the Macedonian-language universities, but education of this kind was difficult for most to achieve . Without a university education, it is difficult for one to assimilate into the Macedonian professional or intellectual arena; therefore, it is difficult to construct a positive identity in relation to one's professional status.