NYT: Fatal Stampede in South Africa Points Up University Crisis

"They hoped for a shot at a coveted spot at one of South Africa’s public universities, and with it a chance to escape the indignity of joblessness that afflicts more than a third of the nation."

"The stampede embodied the broad crisis in South Africa’s overstretched higher education system as it struggles to extend opportunities once reserved for whites to all South Africans. It is a problem of grade school mathematics: Too many students are seeking too few seats at the country’s public universities, which turn away more than half of their applicants, leaving few options for most high school graduates."

"Not only that, the squeeze plays into a wider problem of unemployment among young people. The jobless rate among youths is nearly 70 percent, a staggering problem that even a college degree does not promise to solve."

"Access to higher education for all South Africans was one of the most cherished goals of the struggle against white minority rule."

"Under apartheid, higher education for black South Africans was tightly controlled, and blacks were restricted from many forms of skilled employment. The University of Johannesburg was formed in 2005, when the once all-white Rand Afrikaans University was merged with two other schools."

Fault Lines: Chile rising

"Chilean students have taken over schools and city streets

 in the largest protests the country has seen in decades."

"These actions are causing a political crisis

 for the country's billionaire President, Sebastian Piñera."

"The students are demanding free education, and an end to the privatization of their schools and universities. The free-market based approach to education was implemented by the military dictator Augusto Pinochet in his last days in power."

Unfettered Capitalism: Chris Hedges & Michael Moore

"I think it comes from being an imperial power...
and all imperial societies end as we end."
"The tyranny they impose on others 
they finally impose on themselves."

Chile: Student Protests Spread Throughout Region

"José Barrera, a civil engineering student at the Catholic University, said that what is happening in Chile "is an example of what education is like when it's privatised, when it is no longer defended as a right of everyone.""

"An education law enacted by the 1973-1990 dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet set off a process of decentralisation and privatisation that gave private schools free rein to pursue profit and use entrance exams to select their students. The Chilean system is not just divided into paid private education and tuition-free public education, but is split into three: municipal schools run by local governments, which are publicly funded and free, state-subsidised private schools, and private schools that charge tuition. Within the sphere of state-subsidised private education, students get free tuition at some schools, while at others families pay monthly fees, an arrangement known as "shared financing.""

"The protest movement is calling for an end to the freedom of private schools receiving state subsidies to levy fees at will. Instead of the current system, under which administrators of these institutions rack up profits, the demonstrators want school fees to be invested in under-funded public schools."

"They also want public primary and secondary schools to be directly managed by the Education Ministry, instead of by local governments, because the decentralisation accentuated the inequality in education quality between rich and poor districts."

"Countries that see the Chilean model as an example, and that are moving towards privatisation, have to realise how harmful this kind of system can be for education in general," he argued."

"Capitalism is profits, business, buying and selling, and that is not what educators are about," said Garrido. He added that the movement in which teachers and students have come together is demanding a "social transformation.""

"[T]he student protests have become a broader social movement that will continue to fight for structural changes above and beyond the educational system, such as reforms to the free-market, neoliberal economic system inherited from the dictatorship."

"We need a more democratic country, where the voices of society are really heard. It can't just be the same old political class reaching decisions between four walls."