The rise of education features prominently in the debate on the sources of modern economic growth. Existing accounts stress the importance of popular demand for its public provision. We argue that such an explanation for the spread of schooling is a poor fit for many nations’ schooling histories, such as Imperial Austria. We show that in the Austrian case, schooling and economic development had limited impact on each other; that the popular demand for schooling was weak and that the push for school expansion came mainly from the top of the political hierarchy
