One tends to think of University students in the third world as the budding elite -- educated to a style and at a cost which reinforces aspirations for a life far removed in income, status, power, and often even geographical distance from the mass of their fellow countrymen. No doubt, this is the pattern in most developing countries (as well as in many developed ones), even where graduate unemployment has reduced the expected earnings of the educated and introduced a demoralising delay before finding a job. But the student movement in certain countries of Latin America and recent events in Ethiopia and Ceylon make one wonder whether the picture might be beginning to change -- rhetoric becoming more genuine, and elitism giving place to serious involvement and more active political commitment.