University orientation weeks can easily be mistaken for corporate expos. Every bank, stationary supplier and beverage company comes out to hawk its products. It is a gross demonstration of the marketisation of universities.

But during this year’s orientation weeks, left wing students came out in force to make thousands of students aware of Tony Abbott and education minister Christopher Pyne’s attacks on education.

The government is currently pushing through the biggest university funding cuts in 18 years. These cuts put whole courses under threat.

It is also thinking about selling our HECS debts to private companies – and looking into further measures to increase privatisation and reduce government spending on education.

Transferring more of our education system into the realm of the market will mean higher fees and costs for students in exchange for larger classes and fewer resources.

We are resisting. There is a national campaign that includes a national day of protest on 26 March.

Student union activists got the message out by plastering campuses with posters and stencils, having dedicated stalls, giving out thousands of flyers, and using official induction speeches to make announcements about the demonstration.

Raising the profile of the education campaign is also a way of cutting against the idea that student unions, associations, and guilds should just be about providing services and parties.

Instead of just another beer coupon, students on many campuses this year, for the first time in many, received a leaflet for the upcoming demonstration from their student union.

This is in a large part due to Socialist Alternative students winning a number of positions in union elections across the country at the end of 2013. We now have 30 elected office bearers who are able to use their positions to explain the political role of student unions in general and the point of the education campaign in particular.

At Curtin in Western Australia and Flinders in South Australia, two campuses where Socialist Alternative activists were elected presidents of the student unions, we covered everything from drink bottles to large screen TVs with information about the campaign and the upcoming demonstration.

Students on those campuses were not able to go more than a couple of metres without being reminded of the battle we are in with the government.

Orientation weeks were an important start to a year of determined resistance to Abbott and Pyne’s education agenda. But every other week counts as well and we need as many students as possible involved in the campaign.

Get in touch with the Socialist Alternative club on your campus for details about how you can get involved.