London students occupy university

A group of students have occupied the London School of Economics out of protest against the university’s ‘neoliberal business model’. They have declared solidarity with the occupants of the Maagdenhuis in Amsterdam.About forty students are staying in a classroom and a meeting room of the school. They demand a change to the current “privatised, profit-driven and bureaucratic” university system. In their statement, they write: “When a university is more concerned with its image, its marketability and the ‘added value’ of its degrees, the student is no longer a student – they become a commodity and education becomes a service.”

The university magazine BeaverOnline writes that “the LSE has not seen this kind of direct action since 2010”. The occupation shows quite some simularities to the one in Amsterdam. The doors are open all day for workshops, well-known political activists show up (here: Owen Jones) and the group has a strong social media policy on Twitter and Facebook.

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