International students do need more of a voice in governance. University Chairs should deliver it

Officially, Expressing the international student voice is designed to feed into Chris Skidmore’s International Higher Education Commission (IHEC), which in and of itself is designed to inspire a new International Education Strategy 2.0.

A minor annoyance is one that appears in lots of documents like this – phrases like “by listening to the voices of international students and taking meaningful steps to address their needs…” positions students as objects to be served rather than people that can and do things for themselves with the right support.

To be fair, there’s plenty in here that’s good – as in, for example, it’s bizarre that the current International Education Strategy is silent on where they might live – and there is a whole section on voice that is augmented by a more detailed blog on the Higher Education Policy Institute’s website.

The argument is that there is a “significant opportunity” for international students to contribute to university governance – a realm that it says is one where domestic students, lay governors and academic staff make up most of the participants.

I’m not actually sure that’s true. This year we have a record number of international students in full-time sabbatical officer positions, who are the students that tend to take up the student position on the governing body. That’s not universal, of course.

On another level, they are involved – international students usually get to vote for the students who become student governor.

It’s not clear – only implied – that London Higher CEO Diana Beech and former Middlesex VC Nic Beech mean that more international students should be members of the governing body – the report and the blog veer between general involvement in university decision making and the governing body itself.

But even if we just look at the governing body membership bits, it’s not clear whether the authors want a dedicated international student governor (presumably plus one home student member).

A quite significant number of university governing bodies still only have one student member – “expression” would be a lot easier (both from a confidence perspective and a diversity perspective) if that was two at the very least.

But why one international and one home? You could make just as decent a case for there to be one UG and PG student governor – as many universities do. You could do the same for all sorts of sort of student – and what the post doesn’t do is set out a case for international above others.

I can make a case that a third or half of governing body membership ought to be students, as in other countries. I doubt the authors mean that.

It’s a shame because in the Netherlands – where the university council is made up of staff and students – student elections (separate to the main SU elections) run on a party basis generate impressive (and public) agendas for the university and student experience. Have a look at DAS (“the party for ambitious students”) and UReka (“the student party that focuses on the quality of education and overall student well-being”) at the University of Twente and you’ll see what I mean.

Maybe the authors figure that student governors ought to involve international students more in the discussions they are having at governing body.

That would be easier if the papers weren’t regularly released late, those that operate university governance didn’t regularly overcook the “YOU’RE NOT A REPRESENTATIVE” line, if student governors were allowed to talk through the papers with an SU staff member (as happens successfully in some parts of the sector), and if governing bodies didn’t regularly mark a wholly disproportionate amount of business as “confidential”.

On the other hand, maybe the authors think that governing bodies should get out and engage with students more.

The CUC code does say that “Governance processes and structures should be clearly visible to staff and students (current and future), who should have opportunities to engage with the governance of the institution, should they choose.”

The problem is that that’s often left as “well they can vote in SU elections” which isn’t really good enough, especially when, as I say, most of the papers are late and marked confidential.

It’s not dissimilar to the Office for Students’ public interest governance principles, which say that the governing body must ensure that “students have opportunities to engage with the governance of the provider, and that this allows for a range of perspectives to have influence”.

Ditto in terms of relying on SU elections to deliver that.

The related problem is that the CUC code says that the governing body “needs assurance of” regular, effective two-way communication with students, staff and other stakeholders, and “must be advised of any major issues arising”. That positions management as the stakeholder communicators, reporting to the governing body – rather than the governing body itself rolling its sleeves up and engaging.

Of course what governing bodies should do is focus more on their responsibility – but I don’t mean what they’re responsible for, I mean who they’re responsible to.

A much larger group of students on the body would strengthen that. But the central assumption is that the role is one that requires skill rather than legitimacy, selected as such, with staff and students glued on.

Couple that with the unpaid thing, and it becomes what it becomes – a large group of the “great and good” who are grateful to be tapped on the shoulder on that basis, and have generally done very well for themselves and therefore struggle to understand why students might not be able to match their success.

It’s easy to agree that students in general or even a particular group of students should have more of a voice for all the good reasons that Beech and Beech set out. But we do need to think about what that would entail, and the sort of support we deliver for it. Starting from a position of asking “what would make this effective” would help.

Back in 2020 when the Committee of University Chairs launched the revised governance code for HE, it promised to produce an Illustrative Practice Note on engaging with students. We’re still waiting.