The picketing is part of a week of action by the lecturer’s union, the Association of University Teachers, and the National Union of Students, who are protesting through a class boycott against top-up fees, but the actual effects of this morning’s action were difficult to gauge.

It had been forecast that the joint action would paralyse the nation’s higher education institutions.

A Dundee University spokesperson said because of the spread of 1000 staff over five campuses it was difficult to ascertain numbers taking part.

Philip Burgess, a former president of the AUT and currently a member of the AUT executive committee, said very few of his colleagues had crossed the picket lines on Old Hawkhill and in Perth Road, and he had seen almost none of the 12,000 students who would normally be turning up for classes and lectures.

“I would hope the majority of our colleagues have come out, and follow the example of our last action when the dispute shut the university down.”

At Abertay, while a steady stream of students turned up at the main building, honorary treasurer of the AUT Namasiku Liandu said he understood the majority of the 145 lecturers were supporting strike action and, if they were not teaching, there would be little for the students to do.

Dundee College is unaffected by the dispute. There are no AUT staff at the college and the advice from the student association president Margaret Maich was that students should not boycott classes.

She has instead asked them to fill in forms indicating their debt level.

At St Andrews, the president of the AUT, Ann Kettle, said academics were picketing the entrance to College Gate in North Street, St Mary’s Quad in South Street and the North Haugh science campus. The AUT members from St Andrews later went on to a rally in Dundee’s Marryat Hall.

n Universities Scotland, which represents Scotland’s 21 universities and higher education colleges, today called for greater public investment to ensure fair pay for academics.

Although not an employer’s association, it is to call for an increase in funding to modernise and improve the competit-iveness of pay in the higher education sector.