Lifting the bonnet on university governance

Background

Throughout my career as a lecturer, I’ve tried to understand what makes universities tick. I’ve stood for election to senates and other staff bodies, served on governing bodies and volunteered for committee work, always being a ‘good citizen’ of the campus (otherwise known as a ‘difficult academic’). As someone who grew up working-class in 1980s Liverpool and went to the local comp, higher education was transformative for me, both personally and professionally. Now I want to help protect the same opportunities for those who follow.

What's happened in English higher education over the last couple of decades confirms the vital need for university staff to speak out. Sector leaders had little to say when student fees were trebled in 2012, even though many analysts warned that the incoming funding model would prove unsustainable, and was not in our students’ best interest. Recently, on high profile issues like free speech, we’ve been unable to seize control of the narrative from hostile politicians and media commentators. Though a change of government allows some space for cautious optimism, we remain in a vulnerable position, lumbered with a broken funding model and no longer assured of public support.

If we’re to steer a better way forward, we need to learn from our mistakes. Blame tends to be placed on policy-makers and vice chancellors – justifiably in many respects – but one under-explored area is the university governing body. Governing bodies are the highest authorities in most institutions, responsible for signing off on management policy decisions, including those to close departments or make staff redundant. Governors are legally accountable to the sector regulator, the Office for Students, and have the power to sack the vice chancellor if they so choose. Yet they remain secretive and shadowy groups. Few staff would be able to name any members, or tell you when or where meetings are held. A sanitised version of the minutes may appear somewhere on the university website, eventually, but confidentiality is prized more highly than deep accountability. Crucially, governing bodies avoided using their potentially formidable powers to intervene as the sector underwent rapid and (to many of us) dysfunctional change.

Unfortunately, lifting the bonnet on governing body operations isn’t straightforward. Power doesn’t lie where you expect, and it tends not to be wielded directly. Many governance systems are rooted in arcane statues and ordinances. Occasionally, the bonnet is slammed shut on your fingers by institutional gatekeepers. And even if you are able to locate the university's engine, you’ll probably find it an unfathomable composite of parts and mechanisms, some of which once served some useful function but which now seem rusty and disconnected. Comparison is difficult because every engine is different, and talked about in its own unique language. There's no Haynes Manual to help.

New research

I teamed up with the Council for the Defence of the British University – the organisation committed to defending the sector's autonomy and championing higher education as a public good – to conduct some new research (Jones and Harris, 2024). Between us, my co-investigator Dr Diane Harris and I interviewed current and former governors at over 40 English universities. We wanted to understand the cultures and discourses of university governance, not just the rules and regulations. The sample was self-selecting and no claims to representativeness are made. Based on a behavioural approach, and following the methodological principles of Shattock and Horvath (2019), we simply provided opportunities for members and ex-members to tell their stories.

About one-third of our respondents felt privileged to have served on a governing body, and enjoyed the experience of working alongside their institutional management team. However, the majority expressed at least some degree of frustration at having invested time and energy without having made a discernible impact. Even among those who had a clear sense of their role (‘my job isn’t to make the place run; it's to guide it in the right direction’), few found it easy to navigate internal structures and processes, or fully understand what was required of them.

In the English sector alone, which was the primary focus of the study, governing bodies operate in myriad ways: from Oxbridge models based on the legacy of academic self-governance and with legislative bodies comprising several thousand staff to post-92 models based on market-led managerialist approaches (Shattock, 2012). Though each model presents members with a unique set of challenges (Jones and Hillman, 2019), interviewees from across the sector noted remarkably similar trends: a shift away from democratic principles of university governance towards more top-down cultures, and a growing focus on financial and regulatory matters over educational values. In itself, the corporate model was not necessarily considered problematic – many governors were ideologically comfortable with a more commercial approach to running universities – but a recurring concern was that when governing bodies sought to emulate their private sector equivalents, they soon lost sight of what makes the sector distinct from its profit-driven counterparts, and potentially more valuable to society.

Who gets to govern?

The ways in which new members were identified and recruited was regarded as particularly problematic (Jones and Harris, 2024). One respondent noted that ‘the external governors were very nice but they all seemed to come from roughly the same kind of backgrounds professionally, and they all seemed to know the senior management rather too well.’ Several others commented on the circularity of board relationships: the chair of governors would typically oversee the appointment of senior managers, including the vice chancellor, and those senior staff would then be involved with identifying and recruiting the next chair. A frequent theme was the extent to which meetings were ‘stitched up’ by a small cadre of senior lay members (external volunteers), typically the chairs of sub-committees and the chair of the main board. This cadre was suspected of being inappropriately ‘matey’ with the executive team (salaried senior managers) that they were supposed to be holding to account: ‘It was really clear that nothing was ever said that hadn’t been fully discussed by the vice chancellor and the chair beforehand’, one interviewee said. Some lay governors acknowledged being members of up to six boards in various sectors at the same time, lending credence to suggestions that a ‘professional class’ of governors was emerging, often with little direct connection to or knowledge of the sector.

Recent progress in diversity (see Kakabadse et al., 2020) was felt to be overstated, with several interviewees noting that the profile of those holding most power within their board remained narrow and traditional: ‘It feels very much still that men in suits are taken more seriously’. Some joked about the age profile of the board (data show that most governors are aged 56 or over, even with student members included), and questioned whether individuals who had benefitted from a taxpayer funded higher education could fully appreciate the difficulties faced by younger generations of debt-laden students and graduates.

Who holds the power?

Several respondents noted that board authority was exercised through tight control of the agenda, which was said to be ‘fixed’ in favour of the executive in ways that left more strategic discussions to the end, or failed to include them at all. However, control of meetings was also reinforced in more nuanced ways, through discourses that emphasised hierarchy and maximised compliance (Jones and Harris, 2024). The main board was described as a ‘rubber stamping’ exercise by two interviewees, and by another as ‘sort of stage managed’. One said that the principle of ‘collective responsibility’ was regularly invoked to apply pressure on those who disagreed with management thinking, and several noted that the information packs received before each meeting – though often stretching to several hundred pages – were incomplete or ‘filtered’. This resulted in the sense that membership of the governing body was at times ‘tokenistic’. Some interviewees talked about ‘cliques’ with differing levels of access to data, and complained that key decisions were reached at sub-committees or informal dinners, or via WhatsApp groups. Disturbingly, one interviewee reported that staff and student members of their governing body were barred from attending the first 30 minutes of each meeting.

Among student governors, all of whom reported feeling outnumbered and overwhelmed, some testimonies were particularly alarming. One female interviewee said: ‘I remember once, I was absolutely ripped to shreds by the chair of the board; I think it was my second meeting, absolutely ripped to shreds.’ Other student governors reported developing ‘survival strategies’ that involved making allies of staff members so as to feel less isolated. Several commented that their views were tolerated when about student experience issues but quickly shut down if about finance or other ‘grown up’ topics. One reported feeling it necessary to remind senior members of the governing body that the institution should be run in the best interests of students, not estate developers or private sector partners.

Among staff governors, pressure to conform was also a recurring theme (‘I was terribly intimidated right from the get-go’) and, according to a number of respondents, suggestions for critical debate about management tactics or the welfare of campus communities were unwelcome. Many academic governors felt exasperated that scholarly research was side-lined and sometimes even disparaged (Jones, 2020). Stories were told about governing bodies commissioning their own surveys and reports from external consultants, usually at eye-watering expense, or asking administrative staff to undertake side projects rather than trusting their own (far more skilled and experienced) academic staff. These finding resonate strongly with those reported in The Big Con, an influential recent book Mariana Mazzucato and Rosie Collington (2023).

The negative critique that emerged from student and staff members was reflected, and indeed intensified, in responses from lay members. Many who had successfully contributed to high-level strategic thinking in the private sector found university governance to be a very different environment, especially where their views diverged from conventional or ‘approved’ approaches. One dismissed their board as ‘a collection of people who probably would describe themselves as well-meaning citizens but who predominantly are careerists who have received advice that it's a good thing for them to get a board appointment at a university because it's probably one step behind a remunerated non-executive director role’.

Almost all interviewees acknowledged the growing need for board expertise in finance. However, many expressed concerns that other areas of the university were being marginalised as a result. Some noted that a management narrative of ongoing financial crisis provided a convenient rationale for enacting so-called ‘difficult decisions’. A workforce frightened of institutional collapse, or mass redundancy, is a more easily subjugated workforce. Access to underlying budgetary information was closely guarded at many universities, making it very difficult for ordinary staff – even those with substantial academic know-how in accountancy and management – to challenge the deficit narrative put forward by the governing body's self-assured business realists. Other interviewees noted that the performance indicators used to measure management success, and typically justify increases in senior pay, were often based on flawed international rankings or other blunt, uncontextualised metrics. One told a story about a fellow governor insisting that staff bonuses should be withheld in departments that had fared poorly in a national student survey. It had to be explained to him that bonuses were not part of remuneration packages for academics.

Stronger governance for harder times

There is no doubt that many individual universities face a very real financial threat in the current political climate. A recent PwC review (2024) suggested that up to 80% of institutions would soon fall into deficit if applications from international students continued to fall. A more united sector might seek to address funding issues collaboratively, perhaps by revisiting the pre-market funding era in which recruitment plans were pre-agreed for each course, and lower ranking universities were therefore less vulnerable to higher prestige neighbours opportunistically increasing their numbers. However, such bigger picture thinking was rarely mentioned by interviewees. Rather, evidence suggests that most governing bodies have retreated into mentalities of corporate individualism, seeking to ensure their own institutional survival even at the expense of ‘rival’ universities. Indeed, this pro-market mentality led many senior lay respondents, especially those who chaired sub-committees or held other senior roles on their governing body, to articulate the need for yet more business-minded voices on the governing body. One noted that his institution now had an annual turnover exceeding £1bn and ridiculed the suggestion that oversight could continue to be left to the ‘great and the good’ of the local community. In response to questions about possible membership imbalances, he drew attention to the ‘skills matrices’ used by governing bodies to recognise ‘missing’ areas of expertise in an objective way. However, other interviewees distrusted the methodological rigour of this approach, noting that the skills gaps identified invariably reflected those felt to exist by the chair.

In light of these concerning findings, one question that arises is: to whom are governing bodies accountable? The group responsible for overseeing governance activity in England is the Committee for University Chairs (CUC). As its name implies, this organisation represents those in positions of authority within governing bodies rather than wider membership. Professor Michael Shattock, the primary expert on university governance in the United Kingdom, described the CUC as ‘an essentially quiescent organisation, taking its lead from Universities UK’ when writing with Aniko Horvath (Shattock and Horvath, 2019:101). The CUC (2020) offers a useful code of governance for the sector, but its tone perhaps captures the inward-looking perspective of the group: the market jargon of the sector (‘providers’, ‘delivery’, etc.) is reproduced throughout, while students and staff are framed as ‘relevant stakeholders’ to be engaged with, not core actors.

Among the CUC code's more progressive recommendations is that institutions undertake an effectiveness review every 3 years. However, beyond hinting that this review should have ‘some degree of independent input’, it is left to chairs to determine its terms and scope. The individuals and groups commissioned to undertake the reviews often have close connections to the CUC, leading to suggestions that the sector is marking its own homework. For example, AdvanceHE conducts an average of 15 reviews per year despite also being the agency responsible for supporting governance activity and training new governors. It is therefore perhaps unsurprising that the reviews tend to be light-touch and favour friendly prompts over direct criticism. An effectiveness review of one university in 2015 found the standard of governance to be high, only for the Office for Students to uphold whistleblower allegations of ‘significant and systemic’ failings in the governing body 4 years later. Not all effectiveness reviews are made public. Indeed, governors’ only duty, according to the CUC code, is to ‘chart progress towards achieving any outstanding actions arising from the last effectiveness review’.

University governance reimagined

My experience and research in the field suggests that the time has come for university governors to emerge from the shadows and boldly reimagine their role. In the current political landscape, university staff and students need to believe that the governing body is on their side and committed to protecting their interests. Financial sustainability matters enormously, but so too does students’ mental health, the working conditions of staff, and campus collegiality. At present, chairs tend to focus on guiding institutional managers towards ‘cost-saving’ organisational reconfigurations rather than asking tougher questions about how money is currently spent – often disproportionately on external consultants, senior remuneration, new buildings and the pursuit of fleeting league table recognition. At the national level, governing bodies must learn to set aside competition for income and begin cooperating to put an under-attack sector on the strongest political footing possible (Jones, 2022). Step one would be reasserting the public value of higher education; more than ever before, there is a need for governing bodies to stress the immense contribution that universities make to everyone in society.

Higher education sits within a wider political and cultural landscape that is increasingly pro-corporate, and the danger is that we uncritically assume that ‘good’ or ‘effective’ governance within education looks no different from that in any other sector (Husband and Hill, 2023). A new breed of governors appears to view the sector through the lens of conformity and compliance, rather than seeking to unleash the potential of universities to challenge orthodoxy and offer new, more ethical modes of operation. Were English governing bodies ready to reform, they would not need to look far for inspiration. In the Welsh sector, universities are expected to advertise lay governor vacancies externally and adopt a transparent selection process; and following the Higher Education Governance (Scotland) Act of 2016, Scottish universities are expected to have trade union representation on all governing bodies. Greater democracy is not to be feared. Empowering staff and students would not lead to them fighting their own corner, nor would it undermine the charitable status of the institution. Rather, it would bring much-needed energy, creativity and accountability to a generally stale field of activity. The CUC code would benefit from the kind of close critical attention that governance codes at other educational levels, including schools and colleges, are now beginning to receive (e.g. Forrest et al., 2024).

Governance is an abstract noun. In the case of universities, the process itself is also abstract. One interviewee commented on the lack of actual ‘governing’ that takes place. In a sector beset by challenges, not all of which are financial, the question is whether ordinary members can recover a sense of governing as verb again. The Council for the Defence of British Universities plans to continue its work in this area in the belief that governors are central to the resurgence of higher education, being ideally situated to draw on their expertise and experience across multiple sectors to promote universities as an asset to their host society. The governors we interviewed were all deeply committed to their role, albeit mostly unfulfilled because their contribution had been constrained or ‘managed’. For universities to reemerge as well-oiled engines – and continue offering life-changing opportunities to people like me – those governors now need to take the wheel and steer their institutions in new directions.