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Fears of massive student protests coordinated with an upcoming general strike have led the University of Puerto Rico to shut all eleven of its campuses for an entire week.
The Puerto Rican government announced plans late last month to lay off sixteen thousand government workers in an attempt to close a $3 billion budget deficit. Since the announcement, students and labor have taken a number of protest actions, with student strikes shuttering several UPR campuses in recent weeks.
Fearing similar actions in the lead-up to an island-wide general strike slated for Thursday, and hoping to “calm things down and to allow the university community to think peacefully and constructively about the problems facing Puerto Rico,” the university’s president announced a weeklong system-wide “recess” beginning on Monday.
October 15 update, 11:15 am | A hundred thousand protesters are expected to participate in this morning’s largest rally in support of the Puerto Rican general strike.
11:25 am | Reports from Twitter, citing local news coverage, say that students from the University of Puerto Rico’s school of law have marched onto the Luis A. Ferré Expressway, a major highway into San Juan, shutting it down. Follow #ParoPR for Twitter coverage of the day’s events, most of it in Spanish.
October 16 update | Students occupied the Luis A. Ferré Expressway for eight hours yesterday, maintaining their position long after the primary protest march had ended. They were eventually convinced to disperse after a personal appeal from the elderly Puerto Rican nationalist Rafael Cancel Miranda. [Spanish language news report here, Google automatic translation here.]
Britain’s Conservative Party, also known as the Tories, seem likely to sweep into power in Britain next spring, and today a London newspaper is reporting that they may bring with them a doubling of tuition fees for British university students.
Undergraduate fees in Britain are currently capped at £3,225 a year, about $5,100, but the Tories’ chief higher education official was quoted this morning as saying that he’s open to raising that cap to as much as £7,000 — more than $11,000. Such an increase would dwarf even the massive hikes that are currently being proposed in the University of California system here in the United States.
The center-left Labour Party has led Britain’s government since 1997, but recent polling has shown a strong and relatively stable lead for the Conservatives. By law, new parliamentary elections must be held by June of next year.
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