Strikes began on 6 June at the University of Warsaw, with 20 members of the Akademicki Komitet Protestacyjny (Academic Protesting Committee) occupying the chancellor’s building. Soon, the protest virus sparked in other cities, such as Kraków, Gdansk, Bialystok, Lódz, Katowice, Opole and Poznan. What raises major concerns in the academic community is the proposed introduction of external “councils”, composed by independent experts, to be tasked with supervising universities. Students fear increased political control of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education over academia, eventually leading to taking control of the study programmes. Moreover, according to the reform, smaller regional universities will have their budget to confer PhD degrees reduced, effectively becoming teaching-only facilities, with risks of marginalisation and increased elitism. On the other hand, the budget would be centralised only in some selected areas, which protesters see as a way to give some universities a false “European” glamour.