Students across the world are revolting over tuition and winning
How we’re linked to college protests worldwide
A few weeks ago, in what was the largest student protest since the violent days of Apartheid and the 1976 Soweto Uprising, thousands of South African students rallied outside government offices in Johannesburg.
They gathered to protest the imposition of higher tuition fees and accusations of racism in the country’s academic institutions. While beginning peacefully, spats of violence broke out as police attacked with cannons and gas in order to disperse the enraged students, who then started fires in the streets.
After days of nationwide protests, popularized by the globally trending hashtag #FeesMustFall, the government announced the original 11 percent tuition raise would be nixed. This fight for a democratic education was a massive victory in a country where class inequality is higher now than under Apartheid, and white students dominate academia despite making up only eight percent of the country’s population.
South Africa
In Chile, after years of student demonstrations, university occupations and other direct action, President Bachelet made ending tuition a keystone provision of her 2013 re-election platform.
Beginning in 2011, massive protests rocked the country as students sought a return to public education.
Chilean universities, like those in the United States, faced privatization and unprecedented tuition increases during the 70s under the right-wing dictatorship of Augosto Pinochet, who was supported by the U.S. government.
2011 Chilean student protest
Germany made headlines earlier this year for ending tuition. What wasn’t reported was the massive student struggle against the establishment of tuition in 2006.
After the beginning of fees, student organizations allied themselves with trade unions outside academia to build a popular movement against the privatization of universities. The tactics used were the universal bargaining tools of students: demonstrations, tuition strikes and occupations. The trend in all three of the countries we’ve covered is beginning to show.
With a huge victory, the political struggle against privatization reignited a conversation all across the world: if they can have free education, why can’t we?
Enter CUNY.
Up until 1976, CUNY schools were tuition-free. A 1969 student occupation of Hunter and City College held by black and Puerto Rican student groups opened the way for open admissions and remedial classes for all people with high-school diplomas or GEDs. They radically democratized CUNY and allowed many working class people of color into schools they had previously been locked out of. Student demonstrations manifested the aspirations of communities who faced de facto segregation and the struggle for a truly public and egalitarian education system.
With every increase in tuition or assault on open admissions, students fought back. As the New York Times said in 2010: “CUNY colleges once were known as theaters of unrest. In 1970, students shut off elevator service at Hunter College and liberated the cafeteria by serving free food.
“Helmeted police officers were called, and classes were suspended. In 1976, as CUNY finally faced an end to free tuition, students marched in the streets of Harlem and boycotted classes for three days, while 13 members of the English faculty started a hunger strike…
“In 1989, the possibility of tuition increases led students at City College to pour glue and stick toothpicks into the locks of 400 classrooms. Students seized administration buildings and blocked traffic across the city. In 1991, another series of protests prompted classes to be canceled and commencement to be delayed.”
Another New York Times article from 1989 gives an account of the protests across the city, when tuition was hiked under Governor Mario Cuomo, father of today’s Governor Andrew Cuomo.
Since 2011, tuition across CUNY has increased by $300 a year, placing schooling increasingly beyond the pay of working people and their children. Our school has acquired an oligarchical character with an undemocratic Board of Trustees and millionaire chancellors who go on to cushy Wall Street jobs at JP Morgan after forcing students and faculty to foot a bill that isn’t theirs.
Students across the country are facing a crisis with tuition and textbook prices having risen 80 percent since 2003 and student debt amounting to over $1.2 trillion dollars. Privatization has enforced an unsustainable model for universities across the world, and yet the tide seems to be turning with students leading the way with collective disobedience and demonstrations.
The flame of student activism seems slow to burn and easily doused, yet occasionally a brilliant spark appears which cannot be ignored. What began in South Africa this last week has now spread to the United States. Across the country, the Million Student March is being planned for November 12th, with the demands for “tuition-free public college, the cancellation of all student debt, and a $15 minimum wage for all campus workers.”
If you’re interested, the information for your local rally can be found on their website. See you there.