"The Governor View" - Student Governors

Higher education governance is facing challenge and entering a period of transformation with the updating of the Committee of University Chairs (CUC) Code of Higher Education Governance. In addition ,acute financial pressure can make the delivery of a high-quality student experience that much harder, ensuring student engagement on governing boards has never been more important.

Student governors are able to provide up-to-date accounts of campus life, outline what fellow students’ main concerns are, and enhance the board’s understanding of on-the-ground issues. 

On top of this “authentic voice”, research suggests student representatives are young and more likely to be from ethnic minority backgrounds than board members generally, bringing much needed diversity to governing bodies. 

Most student governors gain board membership through their elected role as a student union president. Skills and understanding of higher education developed as part of being a sabbatical officer can be vital in the governor role, but this automatic enrolment onto the board means student governors often have just one or two years to make their mark.

While a student presence on governing bodies is now more or less universal, new research from the Higher Education Policy Institutie (HEPI), authored by Darcie Jones, HEPI intern and former student governor, Rethinking student voice: how can higher education design effective student governance?shows clearly that their impact on governance is far from assured. 

The report finds that student governors can feel like “ghost governors” who are present at the table but not genuinely involved in shaping decisions. Despite having the same legal responsibilities that all governors carry, they are often “the quietest voice in the room.”

Student governors are at a disadvantage from the outset, according to the report. Some are unaware of the governor role in the sabbatical officer portfolio to begin with. Training is often inconsistent and passive, relying on external provision, citing the importance of Advance HE’s Student Governor training, programme with strong sector focus, but understandably less institutional context - a problem for lay governors too. 

Board culture, power dynamics and relationships shape whether students can feel effective, according to the report.  Student governors often feel like they lack cultural capita and feel locked out by “boardroom lingo”. Some board culture can expect conformity. Supportive chairs can empower students but not all chairs create that climate. Diversity gaps also matter: a board invariably made up of older, able bodied, white governors can “impact student governors’ sense of belonging”.

Activities which are supposed to help students can have the effect of reducing their influence. For instance, some student governors reported that their comments and suggests were subjected to “pre-screening” before the meeting, leaving their contributions seem staged managed; the student voice is present but “symbolic”.  Student governors were also often missing from membership of committees, where much of the decision-making takes place.

One student governor at a university in the midlands who spoke to Advance HE said that while students are the centre of everything and can effectively “make or break the university”, student governors can still feel like they are failing to have an impact even when they have a “seat at the table”.

“For the longest of times, students were not even in the room, so representation is progress but we need to go one step further and be honest about it,” she said. “You can sit in the room and still not shape what happens. You can be consulted but still be peripheral to the decision making.”

According to this board member, student governors should be “afforded the chance to speak up”, to challenge decisions and to have trust in their own abilities.  She noted that sometimes other board members were “very uncomfortable when student governors start to speak up and challenge the way things are”.

She added: “For student governors, clarity and transparency is vital. We need to be able to carry things back to students, even more so at a time of intense financial pressure and deficits.”

At one Welsh university, agenda time at each meeting and at development days is allocated to the students’ union, which means student governors have the space to question and raise concerns.

“That guaranteed agenda time - it could be 15 minutes or half an hour - means our student governors are treated, and seen to be treated, as equals,” said the Board Chair. 

Student governors are included on committees at this university, including on the VC selection panel. The Board Chair and the Vice Chancellor also make themselves available to student governors to ensure board and committee papers can be “demystified”.

“Our positions (that of the student governor and the chair) may not always be aligned but we find reasonable ways of working through,” said the chair. “Student reps sometimes find themselves as the jam in the sandwich. For instance, during strikes, they want to support staff, but they also want to graduate. The students’ union can find itself in a difficult situation and we accept that and try to help them navigate that.”

One student governor agrees that there are inherent tensions. “I wear many hats and I face the daily stresses, and I carry it into Council and committee and voice it out,” she says. “We have to try and bridge the gap between university decision making and students’ understanding of what is going on.”

A Board Chair from a university in the north of England points to the importance of a “really good induction process” to ensure new governors, including student governors, hit the ground running, gain confidence and understand that challenge is part of the culture.

“We really drum it in,” she said. “We have pre-meetings with student and staff reps so they know they can ask difficult questions and make a follow up question if the response they get does not answer the question. The message is ‘don’t say you are satisfied with an answer if you are not’.”

Including student governors in skills matrixes is a key recommendation in the HEPI report. The move has the potential to both harness the skills these governors already possess and identify where more training is needed. Some universities already do this. Others think it is a good idea. 

“We tend to use the skills matrix as a tool during recruitment of lay members but I think we must be recognising the skills and expertise of board members in their entirety, including student governors,” says one board member.

The HEPI report says that “targeted and ongoing training” is crucial for helping students understand, quickly, the legal and regulatory context, including interpreting performance data and financial accounts. 

Rather than external, often generic training, universities could adopt a more “interactive and institution-specific approach to governor training”. This might include spreading sessions over several weeks, to avoid information overload, and integrating practical exercises.

Good practice to support students in developing skills and contextual knowledge could include, for instance, meeting with chief financial officer (CFO) to understand what the accounts mean for the institution and students. 

Mentoring and buddy schemes, which link experienced and new governors, can ensure supportive – not supervisory – relationships. At one institution, student governors are partnered with a governor with skills and experience in complex governance topics. 

Meanwhile a Russell Group institution in the north of England has run “speed networking sessions” for governors over the last three years in the students’ union, giving “all governors the opportunity to find out more about what makes each other tick”. 

Engaging with wider communities, including the student body, can help reduce the responsibility on student governors to be the sole student perspective in institutional decision-making. 

One governor suggested creating student or staff forums that would be “consulted in the run up to major decisions being taken”.

Ongoing support should include “measured development targets and success measures” and programmes such as governor apprenticeships should be explored, says the HEPI publication.

In his foreword to the report, Advance HE chief executive Alistair Jarvis CBE, himself a former student governor, highlights recent moves to increase the student presence on boards beyond students’ union presidents to include, for instance, international, postgraduate or mature students. 

A better composition on boards would help to overcome the “old, white men in expensive suits” issue and bridge the “huge cultural gap” between board discourse and the lived experience, according to one former governor and governance researcher.

“Misunderstandings can arise from the different experiences,” he said. “The age profile of governors being in their late 50s means they have experienced university very differently. One student governor said that when they talk to lay governors, they reminisce about drinking in bars and rag week, and that they wouldn’t understand that now it is about working part-time to survive.”

A regular examination of the culture of the board, and any barriers to inclusion, is recommended by the HEPI report. A difference can be made by relatively simple actions, such as avoiding inaccessible language, formal debate styles and unwritten codes of behaviour, and providing briefings to explain complex policies and procedures. 

Where student members feel that board culture is limiting their contribution, they should not be afraid to raise the issue, says a student governor at a Russell Group institution.

“Student governors are the conduit between the student voice and the institution’s governance,” she said. “Where they can’t see that, there is a problem. If the culture is not enabling students to speak up, then there is a problem. If that culture is not there, it needs to change, by meeting with the Chair or the VC to review things or perhaps a governance review. The Council culture should recognise that student governors are important in that room."