After more than 50 hours manning a barricade at her university faculty building in northern Paris, Camille, 20, said she was tired but determined.

Night and day the humanities student had been keeping vigil at a lecture-hall sit-in, taking turns with another student to doze in a sleeping bag on the cold floor as they guarded the makeshift barricade made from piles of chairs.

Camille was one of scores of arts students protesting against the introduction of more selective entry requirements for universities by France’s centrist president, Emmanuel Macron. The growing student protest movement has irked Macron’s government, which is also grappling with strikes by rail staff in the first major test to his pro-business resolve to reshape the French economy and loosen labour rules in the state sector.

“I’ve got an essay on medieval literature in my bag and I’ll try to finish it in spare moments,” said Camille, a working-class student at the Sorbonne University arts faculty at Clignancourt, northern Paris.

“We’re not slackers. We’re just standing up against Macron’s changes to the university admission process,” she said. “Like all the other Macron reforms, it’s about chipping away at the French social model and loosening the public sector. It’s unfair and creates even greater inequality in society. There are other things we’re furious about, such as Macron’s hard stance on immigration. There’s a growing feeling of anger on several fronts.”

When rail workers launched three months of rolling train strikes this week against Macron’s proposed changes to the French state railway, SNCF, student protesters joined the fray, stepping up their long-running demonstrations against changes to university entry requirements.

For weeks, sit-ins have been disrupting classes at around 12 institutions. When a sit-in in Montpellier was broken up by masked men with bats and sticks last month, other faculties including Lille joined the protest.

On Wednesday night 100 students staging a sit-in at Strasbourg University were evicted by police. There have been student demonstrations in cities from Nantes to Toulouse. The Clignancourt faculty was the only Sorbonne campus affected, but another key Paris university site, Tolbiac, was also blocked.

This week the government said it could face down all the strikes and that the student demonstrators were in the minority. The prime minister, Édouard Philippe, said he was “extremely vigilant” over the student sit-ins, blaming the far-left for stoking them and criticising what he called anti-police graffiti on faculty walls. He said end-of-year exams would not be cancelled and all students would be expected to take them. He said he condemned “all violence” from any side.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Students’ and workers’ leaders at a protest in Paris in May 1968. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

French unions and some on the left have called for students and workers to come together to resist Macron, in a re-run of the May 1968 anti-government demonstrations in which students and workers join forces.

“Frankly, the context right now is totally different to May 1968,” said Eddy, 19, a sociology student on strike in Paris, brushing aside the comparison. “If 1968 was about the shape of society, our strike is about the French social system and protecting the public sector.”

The government argues that its changes to university entrance procedure are essential to fix glaring problems. Every student in France who passes the baccalaureate high school exam has the right to go to university in their home area, which has led to popular subjects such as law and psychology being heavily oversubscribed and has prompted the introduction of an unpopular lottery system in areas where demand is highest.

Under Macron’s changes, passed in February, the lottery system would be wound down and the hardest-pressed universities would be allowed to select students on merit.

The government argues that a lack of specialisation at high school and the inability to select students has led to a high university dropout rate. Around 60% of students in France do not finish their first year of university.

The new law stops short of the type of blanket selection in the UK system. However, some students argue it threatens France’s tradition of university education for all and see the changes as an attack on France’s egalitarian principles.

“The situation before was problematic but the new rules will not help, they will worsen inequality, and universities remain underfunded,” said a 28-year-old sociology student at the Clignancourt sit-in. “The government is starting to get scared. It’s only a few weeks until exams and the end of term. We’ve only got a short period to step up our action, so we can’t back down.”