Gabriel Matthew Schivone, a reporter for the University of Arizona at Tucson’s Daily Wildcat, snagged an interview with Noam Chomsky recently, and Chomsky had some interesting things to say about student activism in the sixties and today.
The whole thing — including Schivone’s analysis of the role of protest on the campus — is worth reading, but here are a couple of choice Chomsky quotes:
When people talk about “the sixties,” what they are thinking of is about two years. You know, 1968, 1969, roughly. A little bit before, a little bit later. And it’s true that student activism today is not like those two years. But, on the whole, I think it’s grown since the 1960s. So, take the feminist and the environmental movements. I mean, they’re from the seventies. Take the International Solidarity Movement — that’s from the eighties. Take the Global Justice Movement, which just had another huge meeting in Brazil. That’s from this century. Plenty of students are involved in these things. In fact, the total level of student involvement in various things is probably as huge as it’s ever been, except for maybe the very peak in the 1960s. It’s not what I would like it to be, but it’s far more than it’s been.
Elite sectors and centers of power want students to be passive and apathetic. One of the reasons for the very sharp rise in tuition is to kind of capture students. You know, if you come out of college with a huge debt, you’re gonna have to work it off. I mean, you’re gonna have to become a corporate lawyer or go into business or something. And you won’t have time for engaged activism. The students of the sixties could take off a year or two and devote it to activism and think, ‘Okay, I’ll get back into my career later on.’ Now, that’s much harder today. And not by accident. These are disciplinary techniques.
studentactivism.net 
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September 14, 2009 at 11:26 am
ForStudentPower
It’s a really good point, and I try to remind folks of it often. Many of the occupiers of the buildings on Columbia’s campus weren’t actually enrolled – they were recent graduates who had decided to hang around and help organize.
That’s doable when your debt maxes out in the low four digits. It’s much harder to do when you owe well into the five digits.
September 14, 2009 at 11:36 am
Josh Jones
Quite so.
Tuition fees bind students into submission not just by the threat of debt, but by forcing them to think as consumers.
Students can no longer bunk classes in order to support strike action or attend national demonstrations – not unless they fancy losing the 20 or 50 or 70 pounds an hour they are spending on their education. Some people will say that’s definitely a good thing – among those people are the bosses and politicians who would otherwise suffer from these legitimate displays of public outcry.
Tuition fees have not made students more ‘apathetic’ – students still, by and large, care about the world as much as they ever have done. They just feel less able to act on it than before, and student debt is one of the reasons why.
– Josh, University of Sussex Students’ Union
September 14, 2009 at 11:46 am
Angus Johnston
And a lot of students in the sixties had no debt at all. The lion’s share of the student aid given out back then was in the form of grants. Now it’s almost all loans.
September 14, 2009 at 11:48 am
Angus Johnston
Your comment about universities “forcing students to think as consumers” is an excellent one. Faculty, administrators, and outside observers tend to describe student consumerism as a way of thinking of the university that students invented, but in my research I’ve found that it was invented by universities in the 1970s as a response to changing conditions on the campus, and imposed on an often skeptical student body.