Paper short abstract:

The student movement is hypothesized as an orientation to overcome the segmentation of higher education as fragmented intellectual and consciousness, projecting the struggle on the educational patterns leading to socially differentiated opportunities of exercising intellectual leadership and power.

Paper long abstract:

Beyond the material claims of the student movement in Chile, against the commodification of education and its over-determining effect on social inequality, this paper discusses the latent normative basis of the social movement in terms of intellectual and professional orientations differentiated through higher education. Such a focus limits the analysis of the movement to higher education, but regarding the centrality of the struggle in this segment, it will be considered as illustrative of the whole movement. The student movement is oriented to control the education system as a mechanism of both material and normative social reproduction. In turn, the normative dimension is conditioned, on one hand, by the qualitative segmentation of higher education in direct relation to social stratification. Therefore, higher education for students from poorer social background with lower 'cultural capital' tends to form 'semi-professionals' and subaltern intellectuals, that are subsequently limited to instrumental tasks and away from the administrative centres of decision-making. On the other hand, the university system is highly diversified into 'ideological state apparatuses', which produces organic intellectuals mobilizing particular social interests and cultural values, and also non-organic professionals pursuing social mobility. The specific normative dimension of the student movement is hypothesized as an orientation to overcome the segmentation of higher education as fragmented intellectual and professional consciousness, potentially projecting the struggle on the educational patterns leading to socially differentiated opportunities of exercising intellectual leadership and power. Empirically, the paper uses 29 interviews with academics from different segments of Chilean higher education.