On 3rd December 2014 students from SOAS and UCL occupied Universities UK (UUK), which is “the voice of UK Universities”, comprising the executive heads of 134 UK universities and colleges. Thus UUK is instrumental in the current marketisation of education. Moreover it is UUK who recently made the proposal to cut the pensions payable to staff by between 11-27%, resulting in the UCU marking boycott.

This was a national day of action for free education, on the day that George Osborne made his autumn statement, which saw protests, occupations and other actions on campuses across the country. The occupation of UUK was an act of protest in support of free, democratic, liberated education. This was organised by the Democratise SOAS & Free Education Activism Group – join the Facebook group and join the mailing list by emailing democratise.soas@gmail.com

We demand that educational institutions be public institutions funded by progressive taxation, providing education as a public good, rather than as commodities for private profit. Currently the average debt of a student is £44,000, but many graduate with more debt than this. This traps people into a system of debt where they can’t afford to be critical or to campaign, because of the pressure to get high enough paying job in order to pay off the debt. Under the new, increased, fee regime the government is spending more money on further education than it did previously due to high spending on student loans and has consequently considered selling off student debt which could allow the private sector to change the conditions and interest of loans which could affect graduates.

Education should be free for all, including international students, who are currently charged extortionate and ever increasing fees in order to prop-up a failing system. We demand an end to the surveillance, intimidation, and discrimination that international students face, with the current government now planning to introduce fees for international students using the NHS. Education must be accessible to all, without financial or social barriers. This campaign is not just about current students but about all of those who are excluded from the current education system.

We want liberated education, with teachers and curricula being representative of the society we live in, rather than being dominated by white men. There are currently only 85 black professors out of 20,000 in the UK and there is a significant gender pay gap in educational institutions. There are attainment gaps across the UK for students from BME and working class backgrounds, who are not achieving the same grades as their counterparts. Learning and teaching methods are still largely based on draconian practices, which are not inclusive of students’ different strengths and learning styles.

With the privatisation of education, welfare and support services have been the first to be cut in many institutions, while student anxiety increases rapidly across the country. The government is planning to cut the Disabled Students Allowance by September 2015. Cutting this vital support allowance will make education even less accessible to students with disabilities – we demand that the DSA be protected. We also demand the restoration of the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) for students in further education, an allowance which has enabled many to study, but we demand that this be increased from the meagre £30 that was previously provided.

While there is a £1 billion surplus in the higher education sector and the salaries of senior management is increasing (the average vice-chancellor salaryis £220,000 and the highest is £435,000), the pay of academic and support staff in universities and colleges has been cut by 13% in real terms since 2008 and pensions are now under attack, and teachers’ labour is increasingly being casualised, with PhD students having to take on more teaching and administrative work, the majority of which is unpaid labour, all of which negatively impacts the quality of teaching and research. Moreover, services are increasingly being outsourced, half of universities and two thirds of further education colleges in the UK use zero hours contracts and 12,500 workers in universities are paid less than the Living Wage.

Although the government describes the privatisation of education as decentralising power to institutions, actually the neoliberalisation of education has devolved greater power to university and college managements, who are running our educational institutions like businesses, selling degrees and other qualifications as commodities for private profit, within an education ‘market’. Thus, educational institutions are not being run in the interests of students and staff, and are governed by managements through corporate, top-down structures, which are not remotely democratic or transparent.

The occupation of UUK was a statement of protest about the impact of neoliberalism on education and in support of free, liberated, democratic education, but also the occupation of a space in Bloomsbury represents the reclaiming of a space in central London, where the vast majority of students cannot afford to live, and many students cannot find affordable housing and many are homeless.

The privatisation and marketization of education is not happening in a vacuum, but is part of the wider austerity and neoliberal agenda which is dismantling our welfare state, transforming public goods such as health and education into commodities, for private profit, and cutting funding to social services and cuts to benefits. This has resulted in an enormous increase in poverty and inequality, and in the further marginalisation of marginalised groups in society. Campaigns for free education and against austerity are intrinsically linked as part of the fight for a more equal and socially just world.

Education must be a right, not a privilege.

UUK called in numerous police vans in response to our totally peaceful occupation. After leaving UUK and coming back to SOAS we found three police vans on the road between SOAS and Birkbeck, so we implemented our Cops Off Campus policy by chasing them off campus / helping them to leave (depending on which way you look at it!) The video of SOAS students vs police van can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byTWAZtiiJE