This article is more than 7 years old

This article is more than 7 years old

A group of more than 20 Warwick students are occupying the university's council chamber in protest against the £42,000 pay rise of its vice-chancellor Nigel Thrift.

The group, which calls itself Protect the Public University, says Thrift's pay packet – which now totals £316,000 – reflects the marketisation of higher education.

It says: "There is currently no space for dialogue over the future of our own university. We are occupying this council chamber in order to open that space, to start that dialogue and to make our voices heard."

The protesters, who began the occupation at 4.30pm on Friday last week, have released a list of eight objectives, urging that:

• the vice-chancellor affirms a commitment to the "protection and promotion of the public university"

• the vice-chancellor relinquish his "unjustifiable pay increase" and the funds be channelled into widening university access to disadvantaged students

• the university oppose the "current lobbying by Russell Group representatives to abolish the tuition fee cap and reduce bursary commitments"

A spokesperson for Warwick University said the university had not yet decided how it would respond to the occupation, but it was "keeping all options open".

The university says it has reminded the students that "there are innumerable opportunities to bring opinions and thoughts to democratic bodies".

The occupation at Warwick comes just a few months after students were evicted from an occupation at Sussex University where they had been protesting against the outsourcing of campus services.

According to the website of Protect the Public University, "the national demonstration [at Sussex] served as a reminder that students across the country must act now if we are to halt this government's radical restructuring of higher education".

The protesters have adopted the same colour as the Occupy movement at Sussex – yellow - and in one poster they reprint a Sussex slogan: "The university is a factory. Shut it down."

A spokesperson for the group says around half of the Warwick occupiers travelled to Sussex earlier this year to take part in a national demonstration which ended with parts of the Brighton campus being vandalised.

He said that the group does not condone such actions, but added: "What's a smashed door compared to the unwinding of free and higher education?"

The protesters say that they intend the occupation to be in constant session.