Worth noting the third comment down which suggests that education in Chile might not be all it seems. I have no idea who the anonymous commentator is. The Independent seems to be a "centre-left" "tabloid" according to Wikipedia. Nine out of the most recent ten articles by the author of the article, Neela Debnath, are from the entertainment industry.

The commenter writes:

Never bother to make comments, but I felt the need to do so here in order to counter lazy and misleading journalism.

First, at the end of the article, it implies that the students took to the streets due to the inaction of the new administration. That is not really the case, in fact, this issue has been at the top of the agenda and is rarely out of the media. It is my understanding that the protest was to highlight that the 'roadmap' from the government is not clear enough yet and that the students believe that have not been involved as much as they should. This, in my mind, is debatable, as they have been consulted by the government in many instances. However, given the state of the Chilean education system, I can understand why they feel they need to be more involved.

'It was hoped, the newly elected president, would bring reform' ....'However, two months on...' I think you have to wait a little bit longer before you imply that change is unlikely to happen.

Second, the throwaway line at the end of the article, regarding the recent protest turning violent without any qualification or context, is laughable. Actually, the protest was the most peaceful I have seen in a while. It misrepresents the reality completely, almost as if the situation in escalating. There are always some people, who are not part of the manifestation, that come looking to incite and carry out violence against authorities. The reasons for this are diverse and to attempt to casually group all of the protesters together and to not highlight this misleading and risible.

Third, whether you agree with what this man has done or not, some context regarding the Universidad del Mar might have been helpful to enlighten the readers. In fact, this university is going to be closed the 31st of December 2014 due to financial irregularities, the quality of the courses offered not being up to standard, non payment to workers of the university, irregularities regarding what was essentially bribery to National accreditation commission. In fact, the rector of the university resigned because of the priority the university was giving to profit above quality. This last issue is could have been worth a throwaway comment in the interest of context and understanding.

The degrees that the students from the Universidad del Mar paid for are no longer worth the paper they are printed on.

The kind of lazy journalism about events in South America that I regularly see in, what are considered to be, reputable, western media outlets is sometimes breathtakingly bad. I really don't understand why this is the case.

I think giving people like this the title of activist is an insult to actual activists.