If you’re supporting student representation you end up thinking a lot about the line between expertise and voice.
If you work in and around higher education for long enough you get to know quite a lot about policy issues, and the history and politics of the debates. You find out which opinions are considered controversial and which have been rehearsed so many times they have passed from the status of opinion to that of received wisdom. At some point you have enough experience – possibly helped by a recognised qualification and a fancy job title – to be considered someone with expertise.
The average student representative doesn’t have that knowhow. They are – by design – inexperienced in sector debates and politics. Many work hard to get up to speed, and learn enough to hold their own in conversations with people with thirty years more experience than them – not just in one specific area of higher education policy but over and over again across the whole gamut.
