A student demonstration in Bonn, November 1997.
Thirty years ago, from Dakar to Mexico City, from
Paris to Berkeley, students took to the streets to announce the coming of a new world.
Students have often been in the forefront of revolutions, and in several countries
have brought down seemingly invincible regimes. But what do they want today? This
is not an easy question to answer, if only because their status is by definition
temporary, because the student population never forms a stable and homogeneous social
group and student demands vary according to their context. The dreams of the students
of 1968 in many countries have given way to a realism arising from the constraints
of the late twentieth century. Today’s students want job opportunities more than
anything else. But they have not all turned their back on the struggle for ideals.
On this double page, we present reports on the student situation in Germany and Indonesia.
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‘I have never let my schooling interfere with Mark Twain, United States, 1835-1910 |
Germany: Lost illusions
Andrew McCathie
German students took to the streets
thirty years ago in a bid to overturn the “bourgeois” social order. Nowadays the
mood could not be more different. Germany’s 1.8 million-plus students are learning
to live in an era of high unemployment and dwindling subsidies.
“Many students are under the illusion that if they work hard enough they’ll get a
job,” says Carola Schmidt, a fourth year history student at Berlin’s Humboldt University.
“But it’s not like that. Often there are just no jobs.”
In the autumn of 1997, students staged a series of strikes and protests to try and
focus national attention on their plight and the crisis overwhelming Germany’s institutes
of higher education. They called for more money to be spent on upgrading teaching
and laboratory equipment, a comprehensive review of government support for students
as well as reform of the country’s higher education system and moves to cut class
sizes. Claudia Boege, a student representative at Frankfurt’s University of Applied
Science, believes that public universities are facing the same difficulties as other
parts of the country’s social system. The problem is, she says, “The politicians
don’t have any new funding ideas.”
The movement largely ran out of steam, leaving behind a trail of frustration and
anxiety about the future. “The mood among students today is, ‘well we can’t change
the process, so we had better make the most of it’,” says Herbert Dieter, a political
scientist with the University of Duisenberg.
Despite considerable media coverage of the strikes and widespread public sympathy
towards the students’ cause, Dieter believes that the problems of education in Germany
remain. In particular, he says that underfunded German universities are not offering
their students much hope of finding a place on an increasingly competitive job market.
With classes so full that there is often just one professor for every 600 undergraduates,
students say they have virtually no contact with their teachers.
If finding a job after university is the key issue for German students today, supporting
themselves during their years of study has also become a high priority for many of
them. Higher education might be free in Germany, but students still have to make
ends meet to pay for the rent and other expenses.
Students have also been demanding increased government financial support. The number
receiving income from the state has fallen in recent years and is now down to about
17 per cent in the western part of the country, compared with 37 per cent 15 years
ago. A similar picture emerges in the east, where the number of students receiving
government support has dropped over the last four years from 55 per cent to about
32 per cent.
As a consequence, the number of students working and studying at the same time has
risen in recent years, while the percentage of undergraduates from lower income families
has fallen from 23 per cent in 1982 to 13 per cent last year. Working while studying
also tends to exacerbate another problem facing German higher education, which is
the number of years spent in the halls of academia. This often means that many students
do not take their first steps towards a full-time career until they are about thirty
years old.
Holding down a job while studying is also important because the lifestyle of today’s
students is less frugal than that of their predecessors of three decades ago. According
to a survey of German undergraduates published in May 1998, six out of ten had a
car and four out of ten had their own apartments. “Today’s students,” says Schmidt,
“like to have more fun and to live an easier life than those of 1968.”
Indonesia: An
uncertain future
Achmad N. Sukarsono
The future of a nation lies in
the hands of the young. For Indonesia, that is no overstatement. In May 1998, it
was the students who caught the world’s attention by spearheading the drive to unseat
the nearly godlike figure of President Suharto from his more than thirty-two-year
presidency. But after the jubilation, the students woke up to find the original problems
still there, with the economy collapsing and politics getting murkier by the day.
“What is the next move? Is this what you want?” a street vendor asks a student activist.
Yet without a larger-than-life common enemy like the Suharto regime, students have
too many wants and too few resources to continue their movement, in the absence of
either a nationwide organization or a shared agenda.
For the more radical students from the Jakarta City Forum, a loose gathering of students
from about 100 Jakarta universities, a complete dismissal of the parliament and government
is in order. They want a so-called Indonesian People’s Committee to replace the establishment
and set up elections as soon as possible. Why? “Because we don’t trust all of the
old institutions,” yells a student leader.
Watching divergent desires polarize student leaders and interest-led politicians
lure student support to their causes, the more down-to-earth students are retreating
from the political arena, to regroup and return to their classes. “My students are
going back to campus to consolidate while keeping an eye on the new government’s
moves,” says Sudarto, rector of Airlangga University in Surabaya.
But this consolidation is far from a reality. “Spontaneous student unity is close
to impossible when there is no political mainstream,” says Ismail, a now-apathetic
former militant. And while the remaining activists argue over competing agendas,
ordinary students have simpler desires. Marijono, a student from Jombang in East
Java says: “We do not want to be fooled again, either by the government, by the International
Monetary Fund or by self-acclaimed reformists.”
He and others like him would prefer to see progress in a field closer to daily life:
education. “Educational improvement should not be ignored. It is the way to enhance
our quality of life,” says Dadang Budiana from the Indonesian Student Association
for International Studies.
Less than 10 per cent of the total national budget is allocated to education. Most
state university students come from the middle class, which can afford the preparation
courses for the rigorous national university entrance exam. Private universities
are expensive. Lower-income youths are essentially left out in the cold, without
access to higher education. “Poor students will always feel inferior,” says Budiana.
“To get a scholarship, they must write a letter, approved by the local government,
stating they are ‘financially incapable’.”
Lower tuition fees are a key demand, according to Budiana. “The government should
slash the military budget and reallocate funds from superfluous high-tech development
for the sake of educating the people.”
Zainal, a student from a poor village in East Java, couldn’t agree more. “Poor guys
like me can’t afford to pay the tuition anymore.” But even the rich students now
are feeling the crunch. The fall of the rupiah has tripled the prices of foreign
textbooks. “I can’t buy books any longer. They are unbelievably expensive,” says
Iwan, a student from privately-run Trisakti University.
For Indonesia’s politically puzzled and scholastically troubled students, helping
overthrow the previous government now seems a lot easier than forging their nation’s–and
their own–future.
