by Laura Haider, Xu Ru

    VIENNA, Oct. 29 (Xinhua) -- Students from half a dozen Austrian cities and towns have been taking to the streets and seizing lecture halls for the past nine days to demand better conditions and treatments.

    The demonstrations, already spilling over to Graz, Innsbruck, Klagenfurt, Linz and Salzburg, were feared to develop into a national event after the dialogue between the Austrian Union of Students and the country's ministry in charge of education ended late Thursday without apparent results.

    Chairman of the Austrian Union of Students Sigrid Maurer called on Prime Minister Werner Faymann and Finance Minister Josef Proll "to take the education agenda into their hands" as the students vowed to carry on with their protests.

    The prime minister on Thursday showed his understanding of the student protests, saying optimal conditions at universities confirmed to the interests of students and faculties as well as the interests of the nation.

    The call by the students' union to protest, sent out via the Internet, got responses from at least 15,000 students from across the country as more than 10,000 students took to the streets in Vienna alone to protest on Wednesday.

    The students, enraged by Science Minister Johannes Hahn's instruction to limit campus access to students, assaulted the minister in charge of educational matters on Wednesday.

    Angry students seized the largest lecture hall at the Vienna University of Arts and an auditorium complex at another campus of the Vienna University.

    The students' union stated that each and every student should have the right to what and where to study in a mature society like Austria and that there should not be any access limitation for Austrian or foreign students.

    The students were also demanding democratization of the country's university system which they say should allow equal say in the decision-making mechanism.

    They further asked for more rights and representation of women in universities.

    "(Sex) Discrimination should not find its presence in Austrian universities," demanded one e-mail sent out by the students' union.