Elsewhere on the site, Steven Jones reports on his new research revealing the “wrong kind of compliance culture” in some university governing bodies.
The report, produced for the Council for the Defence of British Universities, is a cracking read – and in particular the testimonies from student governors on their experiences will chime hard with those gathering in London for Advance HE’s second mid-year student governors training event this week.
I’ve been helping the team at Advance HE with delivery on their programme for a long time now, and I could fill another 30 page report with some of the examples of the way in which they can tend to be “othered”, or their contributions dismissed, either by managers or other (usually lay) governors.
One of the things I do worry about, though, is the tendency for the sector to frame student, staff (and some lay) governor contributions or outlooks as not appropriate for the “proper” role of governance in a university. The standard line – “you’re here to be concerned with the university rather than as a representative” – is often laid on a bit thick and too simplistically for my liking.
