Over the last three decades students have played a mythical role in Albania’s ruling ideology. They are portrayed as the key actor in the overthrow of the “socialist dictatorship” in 1990–91, and thus at the origin of the promised new democracy. Yet despite this supposedly central role, there have been no major student protests in Albania since then. So, when twenty thousand students gathered in front of the Ministry of Education in early December 2018, there was widespread shock — even among the protesters themselves.

In protests lasting for three weeks, there was a radicalization of both students’ demands and their collective imaginary. If on day one the mass of protesters sought the withdrawal of a government decision to charge those who failed their exams, by day two the demand was free higher education, and a radical democratic reorganization of university life. They soon won major concessions, including a 50 percent cut in undergrad tuition fees.

But large sectors of society wanted something more from the students: for them to bring about the Big Change, a cataclysm that was hard to define but in which great hopes were invested. It’s not that workers or poor Albanians identify with the students’ own conditions, as such. But the protests certainly did raise the political expectations of the social majority, except the 1 percent of oligarchs. The old myths of 1990–91 fed hopes that the students would form a new anti-systemic movement or political party.