Why Aren't US Students Rioting Over Crazy Tuition Hikes Like College Kids in Europe?

In fact, all across Europe students are revolting. For months, Italian students have been protesting tuition cuts and budget reforms. Greek students have not responded kindly to IMF endorsed austerity measures. And proposed cuts to the pension system have driven French students, in typical fashion, apoplectic.

Courtney Martin in The American Prospect asks: “But why are the U.K. crowds almost 500 times as robust as those in the U.S.? Why does the American movement to fight tuition hikes and funding cuts remain so anemic in comparison?”

And she answers her question: “In no small part, it’s because privileged students at America’s colleges and universities generally don’t take the issue personally. Those who are politically active tend to set their sights on distant horizons—the poor in India, say, or the oppressed in Afghanistan.”

When the young and privileged take their “do-gooderism” abroad, they take a lot of the energy for local activism with them. Interesting rationale, but I don’t think it fully explains the discrepancy.

What best explains the dormancy on many college campuses is rooted in a national condition. The social value placed on universally accessible higher education has declined. College used to be dramatically less expensive because it was heavily subsidized by the state. The past few decades have seen “massive disinvestment”. In the accompanying time, the burden of financing higher education has shifted to the individual.

Or as Tom Hayden, one of the co-founders of Students for a Democratic Society, told me “The question for today’s student is not whether they can read Zinn, Anais Nin or Noam Chomsky, but whether they can afford to.”

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