I remember a conversation I had a couple of years ago in the poolside bar area of a party hostel in Medellin, Colombia, with a British guy named Allen. For both of us, college was an eventuality that we were both looking forward to and dreading, but at that time it was just a topic of small talk over an early evening beer.

Allen had some insightful things to say about American higher education. The cost of tuition at our universities appalled him, and he was shocked that American students don’t raise hell about it. “If the cost of tuition was that high in the UK,” he informed me, “we would be out in the streets rioting.”

Of course, I knew tuition prices in America were high, but for some reason I had always considered them a necessary evil, like rush hour traffic or radio advertisements. Until I met Allen, I never realized that affordable tuition is something students in the UK and around the world consider a government-given right, and have been defending by all means necessary for years.

History has proved Allen correct. In November of last year, the UK raised the cap on tuition fees from 3,200 to 9,000 pounds ($14,000), setting a wave of student protests that continues today. On many occasions, the protests have turned into riots and have resulted in no shortage of looting and violence. Protesters are upset with recent government spending cuts and austerity programs, which have hit education especially hard.

Protests in Chile began in earnest during the past academic year and have left the school system immobilized, creating traffic jams in Santiago, and involved numerous clashes with police. The student movement is led by University of Chile graduate geography student Camila Vallejo, and demands government-supported free education for all.

The average cost of primary education in Chile is $400 dollars a month, while the minimum wage is $363 per month. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Chilean government provides 15 percent of the overall funding in higher education, compared to an average of 69 percent for developed countries. Clearly, higher education is not affordable for the majority of Chilean families. Many parents work two or three jobs to send their children to school.

Chilean students recently rejected a government budget plan that included an 8.6 percent increase in spending on education. Unless their demands are met, they intend to continue their walk-outs and sit-ins that have grounded education to a halt for the past six months.

In the past two years, the University of Wisconsin has faced both government spending cuts and attempts to privatize. Here, budget cuts in education were met with protests that continue today in the form of the recall effort. The New Badger Partnership, a proposal that would have certainly led to tuition increases, was thankfully rejected. However, education in Wisconsin remains obscenely expensive and government support has been lukewarm at best.

The aftermath of the recession and the resulting government budget disasters in all corners of the globe have set off widespread fiscal austerity measures. Austerity and budget cuts have had a particularly damaging effect on education.

In hard economic times with elevated unemployment rates, investment in education is crucial. Education is what makes workers versatile, drives innovation and allows markets to adapt to a rapidly evolving global economy. Affordable – or better yet free – education for all is an antidote to socio-economic inequality. Expensive and increasingly privatized education is exacerbating these inequalities on a global scale.

Education is a fundamental human right. Unfortunately, recent developments with government spending at the local and international level show that providing this fundamental human right to all students is not a priority. For most students, education has become an investment. Governments in the UK, Chile and Wisconsin have been reluctant to invest in the future of their students.

Charles Godfrey ([email protected]) is a sophomore majoring in math and physics.