Whilst the above pieces largely focus on HE in the UK, a very different piece by a French academic activist, Emilie Souyri, describes how in 2009 French university lecturers and students were resisting President Sarkozy’s efforts to impose a more stratified and audit‐driven Higher Education system (familiar to lecturers in the UK) and creatively rethinking aspects of their practices, at least implicitly utilising critical pedagogy’s insights. French strikes occurred in the context of university and wider strikes in Italy and Greece in response to their governments’ cuts in 2008.
Souyri’s example shows how French university staff and students were not necessarily accepting the restructuring of HE as we in the UK have largely done.