With the ongoing controversy over the Labour government's plan to introduce top-up fees for university tuition rumbling away in the background, lecturers represented by the Association of University Teachers (AUT) went on strike this week over pay reductions, working conditions, proposed changes to union representation of lecturers, and differential treatment of staff based on where they work rather than the jobs that they perform. The Cambridge AUT has called upon students to campaign with them for better pay, and have pledged their support for student campaigns against variable top-up fees.

Meanwhile, at Essex University in Colchester, students occupied the boardroom of university boss Ivor Crewe, a high-profile advocate of fees, and called for a protest movement that can "force a shift in society's priorities, away from warfare and greed and towards satisfying human welfare and need." Occupations have also occurred at Oxford University and in Sheffield, where the Town Hall was taken over by students. Direct actions against threatened closures of the chemistry, philosophy, development studies, sociology and anthropology departments at Swansea University are planned for the 10th of March.
[Video: Cambridge AUT & CUSU pickets] [Cambridge AUT Ballot on Industrial Action] [How to Occupy Your University]

Top-up fees and the university system in the UK are usually discussed as if Britain was a lone island of turmoil in a wider ocean of calm worldwide. Within the mainstream press, there has been little recognition that a systematic, consistent set of structural reforms is being implemented around the globe by proponents of what might be called a "neoliberal", "marketized" approach to education. Here is a sampling of what is going on in:
[Argentina] [Australia] [Canada] [Germany] [Pakistan] [Russia]