This article provides an overview of social and solidarity economy (SSE) initiatives on French university campuses, which may be led by professors, by students, or even by university services. After they began to take form in the early twentieth century, these initiatives soon went beyond teaching and research, becoming part of professors’ and students’ activist mentalities and helping to transform the role of universities in society. The overview of these initiatives is further fleshed out with a study of a short-lived student cooperative, Coop’en 8, which was led by the professional development office at Université Paris-8, marking a major turning point in French universities opening up more to the SSE and beginning to share its goals.