University governing bodies are often “cliquish” and “intimidating”, with “business realists” dominating and chairs “a bit too matey with senior management”, creating a “corporate boardroom ideology” disconnected from academics and students, according to a report based on interviews with members.
The report for the Council for the Defence of British Universities, University Governance: views from the inside, by Steven Jones and Diane Harris of the University of Manchester’s Manchester Institute of Education, is based on interviews with 47 current and former members of English university governing bodies who responded to a “general call on social media”.
It identifies “serious shortcomings” in university governance, with some governing bodies “reported to be stratified, cliquish and even intimidating”.
Professor Jones, who is professor of higher education at Manchester, said the aim of the report was to “find out what governance is really like: who gets to do it; how things are talked about; what the relationship is like between the senior managers and the ordinary board members”.
