When the Mexican government implemented its policy of socialist education, it directly targeted religious-affiliated, private schooling. Students in these schools were barred from receiving valid educational certification, which effectively prevented many from entering professions. The aim of socialist education was to create a "useful and efficient worker capable of assuming leadership of the national economy, employing methods of modern science with a profound consciousness of collective responsibility ... an indispensable precondition for the coming of a state in the hands of the working classes." The conflict was violent at the National University in Mexico City, which in 1929 had become autonomous from government control, but there was also conflict at regional universities as well, mainly student strikes. Cárdenas backed away from socialist education. Catholic student groups' mobilization against socialist education had lasting consequences, with leaders in the Catholic Student Union playing an important role in the founding of the conservative, pro-Catholic National Action Party in 1939.