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Nearly 300 academics from 76 universities have written to the Guardian to say they understand the "anger of students" over education cuts and to express their support for this week's planned protests.

Praising the "magnificent demonstration" by students and staff earlier this month, the letter's signatories claim that plans to raise tuition fees and scrap the education maintenance allowance will lead to the "destruction of broad-based, critical education".

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The signatories to today's letter – who are drawn from 68 UK universities and eight non-UK education institutions – say they consider themselves to be "involved in a defence, not just of our jobs, but of the values which brought us into higher education, reflecting the wider significance of education to society".

They go on to say that the planned increase in fees means the "effective removal of higher education" for working people.

The letter points to research from the Institute of Fiscal Studies which says that the cuts will lead to "insignificant savings to the taxpayer".

"The ending of the education maintenance allowance and adult learning grants gives the lie to the coalition's attempts to argue that those on lower incomes will retain access – these students will not be able to afford to stay in post-16 education to secure the qualifications they need to apply for further or higher education.

"The coalition has no mandate for its ideologically driven class rule – the anger of students is no surprise to us. Our intention is to fight alongside them in our institutions to defend social science, humanities and the arts and to protect higher and further education for all."

The decision to cut the universities' teaching budget in England by 40% and raise the cap on tuition fees threefold to £9,000 (US$14,360) could make foreign students look elsewhere, precisely at the moment when many more options are being made available, they say, and many are hoping to attract UK students seeking cheaper options than at home.

The areas of concern are the likely impact on teaching quality of the cuts in funding if they are not replaced by rises in fee income and the potential deterrent effect to EU and other overseas students of allowing a massive fee hike.

Thousands of students across the country staged sit-ins, walk-outs and demonstrations today to show their opposition to the increase in tuition fees.

The nationwide protest, organised by the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts (NCAFC), saw schoolchildren and sixth-formers as well as university students and lecturers take to the streets to demonstrate.

An estimated 10,000 joined a demonstration in central London. The protests were largely peaceful but there were clashes with police when specialist officers corralled students into a "kettle" in Whitehall.

It was the number of placards bearing references to Harry Potter that gave the game away. "Now we can't afford to go to Hogwarts", read one. "David Cameron is Voldemort," suggested another.

Of course the veterans of these sort of demonstrations were here: student union representatives, political activists, leftwing teachers, anarchists and stalwarts of the Socialist Workers party.

But a large, excited, very vocal percentage were schoolchildren, some as young as 13 or 14, who had piled out of lessons and joined the clamour against increases in tuition fees and the loss of education maintenance allowances.

This is a leaderless protest with no agenda but justice: it is a new children's crusade, epic and tragic. More fires are lit as the children try to keep warm: they are burning placards and pages from their school planners. A sign saying "Dumbledore would not stand for this shit!" goes up in flames.

This is also an organic movement: unlike previous demos, there are no socialist organisers leading the way, no party flags to rally behind. The word spread through Twitter and Facebook; rumours passed around classrooms and meeting halls: get to Westminster, show them your anger.

"I don't think I've ever seen anything quite so frightening. I've seen police on horseback, but this was like a cavalry charge. There was a line of police on foot, and they just moved out of the way, then maybe a hundred yards down the street there was a line of police on horseback. We'd been standing firmly and just moving back slowly, but when the police on horseback charged, that was the moment when we absolutely ran."

On Thursday, the day of the meeting, a student occupation was in full swing. The epicentre in the Jeremy Bentham room – where protesters are still camped out – was packed to bursting. A living wage, with the outsourced cleaners brought back in-house, had become one of their key demands. Here, as elsewhere, what started as protests about tuition fees accelerated into a political movement against cuts of all kinds. Inequality, poverty, the shredding of public services, unemployment, bankers and boardroom bonuses had become part of the protest. One fight, one struggle, they said, as if 40 years had suddenly fallen away. Not exactly Paris 1968, but in their sit-in meetings they were beginning to see themselves as the vanguard for a wider campaign. Thatcher's children, selfish, materialist, apathetic? Not at all.

Disposing of your old kettle in an environmentally friendly way is difficult. Since the police seem to like kettles so much help them out by sending your old kettle to:

Metropolitan Police Service
New Scotland Yard
Broadway
London
SW1H 0BG

Pass the idea on to anyone you know who has an old kettle they want to get rid of or who wants to protest against police tactics. A few thousand kettles should restrict their mobility somewhat.

• Shame on the Met for kettling 13 and 14 year olds for nine hours. It was freezing last night, and many of them were dressed only in school uniforms because they'd walked out of lessons. That's horrific.


• Am still dubious about the Met's claim that the police van was occupied by police officers who abandoned it because they felt unsafe. I'm inclined to think that it was abandoned deliberately so the protesters had something to damage, which then gave the Met an excuse for their aggressive response.


• I suspect the Met are trying to make an example out of these protesters and trying to scare off young people from protesting again. I'm not sure if people are frightened by their response, or angered by it.


• I'm kind of touched by the strength of feeling and selflessness shown by protesters. A fair number of them have or will have graduated by the time the cuts to funding and increased tuition fees come in, but they're protesting for those who will be affected. I intend to protest, and when I do, it will be for research, teaching and the students I may one day teach.

The idea of fertility as a medicable condition, requiring powerful drugs or even surgical interventions to prevent a woman’s body from doing exactly what it does naturally, is basically and ultimately the idea that femaleness itself is such a condition, a sort of XX Syndrome.