ABSTRACT
In a sardonically impassioned appeal, Vijay Prashad documents student struggles ranging from South Africa to India that contest the neo-liberal vision of higher education as private good. While fee hikes are only a tangible manifestation of this economic policy-agenda, this piece rues the larger assault on a democratic political ethos that university students must necessarily articulate and perform. The anathema that ‘student-politics’ has come to signify for a public perception around public universities is what needs to be vehemently resisted, because it is only through the former that a practice of critical citizenship may be approximated.
