Peruvian University Students Stage Nationwide Strike Over Economic Conditions and Education Funding

University students from 16 regions across Peru carried out a nationwide strike on June 2, 2026, organised by the national student federation in a coordinated action that temporarily shut down classes and paralysed campus activities from Lima to regional universities in the highlands and Amazon basin. The 24-hour stoppage marked one of the most geographically dispersed student mobilisations Peru has seen in recent years, drawing participation from institutions in Cajamarca, Cusco, Puno, Arequipa, and the northern coastal regions alongside the capital's major public universities.

The demonstration put immediate pressure on the administration of President Dina Boluarte at a moment when her government is already managing fractured congressional support and sustained popular opposition to its economic management. Student leaders framed the strike as a response to what they describe as systematic neglect of public higher education by successive administrations that have squeezed university budgets while tuition costs and living expenses have climbed faster than any corresponding increase in state financial aid. The federation's leadership said the strike would be the first in a broader campaign if the government did not open negotiations on a set of seven specific demands.

What the students are demanding

The Federation of University Students, known by its Spanish acronym FEU, presented a platform centred on three core grievances. First, an overhaul of the Beca 18 and Beca Continuidad scholarship programmes, which provide tuition coverage and living stipends to low-income students: the federation argues that the income thresholds that determine eligibility have not been adjusted to reflect current poverty metrics, effectively excluding a large cohort of students whose families earn above the old threshold but still cannot cover basic expenses without external support. Second, a legal guarantee of university autonomy from political appointments, a concern that intensified after the previous congress attempted to pass legislation that critics said would have increased executive influence over rector selection at public institutions. Third, a reversal of budget cuts enacted in the 2025 finance law, which reduced transfers to state universities by approximately 8 percent in real terms compared to the previous fiscal year.

The strike drew particular strength from students in regional universities where institutional resources are thinnest and scholarship access is more limited than in the capital. At the Universidad Nacional de San Antonio Abad del Cusco, several hundred students assembled at the main gate before dawn on June 2, carrying banners that referenced both immediate grievances — the rising price of food in university dining halls — and longer-term concerns about the future of public education under a government that has prioritised fiscal consolidation over social spending. Similar scenes played out in Cajamarca and Puno, where student leaders described protest participation as the highest in three years.

Government response and political context

The Ministry of Education issued a statement on the afternoon of June 2 acknowledging the right to peaceful protest while urging students to return to classes and engage through established institutional channels. A ministry spokesperson noted that the Beca 18 programme had expanded coverage to a record 42,000 students in 2025 and argued that the government's scholarship infrastructure was more robust than at any prior point in Peru's history. The statement did not directly address the demand for budget restoration or university governance reform.

The timing of the strike is not incidental. The Boluarte government has been navigating a difficult political landscape since congressional elections in January 2026 produced a fragmented legislature in which no single coalition holds a majority. Two competing coalitions — one leaning toward the anti-corruption platform of former president Alberto Fujimori's daughter Keiko, and another aligned with the leftist Peru Libre bloc — have each attempted to construct governing alliances, leaving the executive with limited room to advance legislation and even less appetite for confrontations with organised social movements that could further destabilise its remaining support. Student mobilisation at this juncture creates an additional pressure point at a moment when the government's bandwidth for managing discontent is already constrained.

Structural pressures in Peruvian higher education

The grievances animating the strike reflect longer-term structural conditions that have shaped public universities in Peru for more than two decades. State investment in higher education as a share of GDP has remained below the regional average, and the expansion of university enrolment driven by the post-2000 economic boom was never matched by a commensurate increase in operating budgets for existing institutions. The result is a tiered system in which a small number of elite public universities in Lima — the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, the Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería — receive disproportionate resources, while regional institutions compete for whatever remainder flows from the central budget.

This stratification has been compounded by the effects of the pandemic, which forced universities to invest in digital infrastructure without additional state support, and by inflation, which eroded the real value of scholarship stipends that had been calibrated to a lower-price environment. The 2025 budget cuts, described by the finance ministry as a necessary adjustment to declining fiscal revenues from mining royalties, fell disproportionately on universities with the least capacity to absorb reductions through alternative revenue streams. For students from low-income households in regional Peru, the practical consequence has been a narrowing of options: either accept debt to attend a private university, or attend a public one with fewer resources and greater uncertainty about the quality of instruction they will receive.

Uncertain path forward

The sources do not indicate whether the Boluarte government intends to open formal talks with the student federation, nor whether the congressional opposition will attempt to use the mobilisation as leverage in ongoing coalition negotiations. The FEU has set a deadline of late June for a government response; if that window closes without movement, leaders have said they will escalate to a 48-hour strike and a coordinated march on the capital — a tactic that has historically concentrated political pressure on administrations that believed regional discontent could be managed through containment.

Whether this strike represents the opening phase of a sustained movement or a discrete protest that exhausts itself in symbolic messaging will depend substantially on whether the government chooses to engage substantively rather than administratively. The political calculus is complicated by the fact that university students, while not an electoral majority, are a mobilised constituency whose grievances overlap with those of broader working and middle-class Peruvians who have seen real wages stagnate even as the country's extractive sectors continue to generate export revenues. A government that appears dismissive of student demands risks signalling to a wider public that it is structurally incapable of responding to pressure from below.

This article draws on reporting from Pressenza on the student strike and publicly available statements from the Peruvian Ministry of Education.