University student movements are diverse socio-cultural entities. Depending on the cultural and economic moment, university student movements have beenintensely political entities that participate in steering the aims of government and nation. However at other moments, student movements have been less concerned with wider socio-political issues, and have worked mainly within the realm of student issues and university administration. This paper applies a matrix to analyze the commonalities and differences between various student movements and to understand more about their relationships to their immediate and broader environments. This article examines three student movements, and some of the factors leading to their evolution in India, Argentina and the United States by building on concepts first introduced by Philip Altbach in 1968.