Tag: Governance

  • Effective finance governance is about balancing high quality data with managing existential uncertainty

    Effective finance governance is about balancing high quality data with managing existential uncertainty

    Higher education institution finances are not like the finances of other organisations, in the strange blend of commercial imperative and charitable purpose.

    A big portion of their revenue is driven by loss-making activity in research and programmes that lose money; their surplus-driving activity in international recruitment is hyper-competitive; and they have a cost base in salaries, pensions, and infrastructure that are influenced by factors outside their direct control.

    The current moment of financial pressure on higher education has tightened focus on the governance of university finances, with concerns expressed by the Department for Education and the Office for Students in the English context, and particular scrutiny from government and regulators in Scotland in light of the financial crisis at the University of Dundee last year.

    To the extent that governments set the terms of the higher education funding settlement it is perhaps unreasonable to lay blame for any given higher education institution’s financial struggles at the feet of the board of governors or university leadership. But even with this caveat, the realities of the current moment call for well-managed internal financial governance and robust scrutiny and challenge of the executive’s plans from governing bodies.

    None of this is straightforward – the structures and cultures of higher education require a level of negotiation between academic priorities, external policy drivers, and organisational sustainability. Commercial acumen must be balanced with consciousness of the social mission and the rewards offered by short-term opportunities set against the responsibility to steward organisations that play a critical role in the national wellbeing for the long term.

    Together with TechnologyOne, we recently convened a private round table discussion among a group of COOs and financial directors, representing a diverse range of higher education institutions. We wanted to explore how these pressures are manifesting as emerging priorities for governance, and the nature of those priorities for finance leaders.

    Board cultures and capabilities

    One participant wryly observed that not every board member may have a full understanding of the scale of the challenges facing the sector as a whole, and their institution in particular, at the point of taking up their role, and their first exposure to the financial realities can sometimes be shocking. Commercial experience and acumen are much in demand on boards in financially challenging times, but that commercial awareness has to be deployed in the service of financial sustainability – and the definition of “sustainability” can be something of a moving target, especially when the future is uncertain.

    Attendees shared several examples of the kind of tensions around financial decision-making boards have to work through: between the cash demands of the next 18 months and the longer-term investments that will ensure the institution is still able to achieve its mission five years or a decade into the future; or between stockpiling reserves to guard against future risks versus delivering mission-led activity.

    There can be no right answer to these questions, and ultimately it is for the leadership of the institution to be accountable for these kinds of strategic choices. It is not that board members don’t understand the financial fundamentals, but that, attendees reflected, the nature of the trade-offs and the implications of some decisions may not be fully taken account of as the discussion unfolds. Financial directors and CFOs can play a critical role in ensuring these board-level discussions are shaped constructively, through prior briefing with board and committee chairs, and through being brought into the discussion as appropriate.

    Risk, risk appetite and forecasting

    Boards are, in light of ongoing public discussion about the risk of institutional financial crisis or even insolvency, naturally concerned about avoiding being the next institution to hit the headlines as facing serious financial challenge. Paradoxically, there was also a sense that this driving concern can lead to risk averse behaviours that are not always in the best interest of the organisation, such as conserving cash that could be used for surplus generating activity, or looking at revenue raising independently from the costs implied in raising revenue – the gap between the revenue and real cost of undertaking research being a classic example.

    One area to improve is understanding of risks, and risk appetite. Boards can, broadly, be appraised of risk and particularly financial risk. However, they can be less fluent in considering the risk they are willing to endure in order to solve some of their underlying challenges, or the relationship between risk and opportunity. For example, boards may see an inherent risk in their cash flow position. They often lean toward conserving cash (a low risk appetite) but this may actually worsen their cash position if they do not look at revenue generation (a more risky proposition.) At the other end of the spectrum boards may be tempted to pursue opportunities to raise revenue that do not contribute to, or distract from, the wider organisational mission and strategic objectives.

    Dealing with uncertainty is never easy, and there was a lively discussion about the role and purpose of financial forecasting, with one attendee pointing out that the idea of creating a five year financial forecast in a sector that is changing so rapidly is “a bit of a nonsense” with another observing “the only thing we know when we’re putting together our forecast is that it’s wrong.”

    It was noted that some boards spend very little time on the forecast and it was suggested that this was an area for greater focus, not to attempt to accurately predict the unpredictable but to socialise discussion about the nature of the uncertainties and their implications. One attendee argued that the point of the forecast is not in the accuracy of the numbers but that there are agreed actions following from the forecast – “we know what we’re going to do as a result.” Another suggested that the Office for Students could potentially offer some additional insight into what it expects to see in the financial returns at the point of preparing those returns, rather than raising concerns after the fact.

    Data and systems

    The institutional systems that bring together disparate financial systems into a single picture are of varying quality. Sometimes, universities are dependent on an amalgamation of systems, spreadsheets, and other data sources, that involve a degree of manual reconciliation. Inevitably, the more systems that exist and the more people who input the more room there is for disagreement and error. Even the most sophisticated systems that include automation and checks are only as accurate as the information provided to them.

    The accuracy and clarity of financial information matters enormously. Without it it becomes impossible to know where the gaps are in terms of income and costs. Managers and budget-holders cannot understand their own situation and it becomes much harder to present a clear picture to executive teams and from there, to boards. A key “ask” of financial management systems was to integrate with other data sources in ways that allow the presentation of financial information to be legible and allow for a clear story to emerge.

    Attendees at the round table reported a number of areas of focus in tightening up internal financial management and visibility of financial information. One critical area of focus was in improving general financial literacy across the organisation, so that institutional staff could understand their institution’s financial circumstances in more detail. Institutional sustainability is everybody’s problem, not just the finance team’s.

    In reporting to board, attendees were working on shortening and clarifying papers, providing more contextual information, and making greater use of visual aids and diagrams, with one attendee noting “the quality of management reports is an enabler of good governance.”

    In times of financial pressure and challenge, the quality of financial decision-making is ever more intimately tied to the quality of financial information. Budget holders, finance teams, executive teams, and boards all need to be able to assess the current state of things and plan for the future, despite its uncertainties.

    Effective governance in this context doesn’t mean fundamentally changing the management processes or governors departing from their traditional role of scrutiny and accountability, but it does mean engaging in an ongoing process of improving basic financial processes and management information – while at the same time embedding a culture of constructive discussion about the overall financial position across the whole institution.

    This article is published as part of a partnership with TechnologyOne, focused on effective financial governance. Join Wonkhe and TechnologyOne on Thursday 29 January 12.00-1.00pm for a free webinar, Show them the money: exploring effective governance of university finances.

    Source link

  • WEEKEND READING: Governance: a new salience

    WEEKEND READING: Governance: a new salience

    Author:
    Mary Curnock Cook

    Published:

    This blog is kindly authored by Mary Curnock Cook CBE, Chair of the Governing Body at the Dyson Institute of Engineering and Technology, NED at the London Interdisciplinary School and Council member at the University of Leicester, and HEPI Trustee. 

    Governance in higher education may have been quietly rising up the regulatory agenda recently, but at the 2025 AdvanceHE Governance Conference, it felt as if it had reached peak salience in the general discourse about the future of the sector.  Both higher education and Skills Minister, Baroness (Jacqui) Smith of Malvern, and Office for Students (OfS) Chair, Professor Edward Peck, were present to lend weight to the arguments for strengthening higher education governance.  

    Baroness Smith cited weaknesses of governance, including financial oversight (and ensuing precarity), optimism bias in recruitment forecasting, franchising scandals, and the lack of understanding of the cumulative impact of risks. She challenged governing bodies to play their part in reshaping the sector in response to the Skills White Paper.  The message was clear: universities are autonomous institutions, and she is expecting them to step up to collaborate with further education institutions and employers to meet the 2040 target of two-thirds of young people reaching at least Level 4 by age 25.  Government had announced inflation-related tuition fee rises to support this. 

    In his wide ranging ‘in conversation’ piece with AdvanceHE governance guru, Aaron Porter, the OfS Chair set out the regulator’s thinking on strengthening governance.  As a former vice-chancellor himself, Professor Peck knows that co-regulation with the sector will go down better than prescription, so the OfS is supportive of the current Committee for University Chairs (CUC) review of the HE Code of Governance and is collaborating with the sector on this and other initiatives to improve governance.  It is important, he suggested, for the CUC to get this right to avoid the need for a material increase in regulatory oversight of governance arrangements in universities, rather than the more risk-based model of regulation in this space which the OfS wants to test with the sector. He also expects the new CUC code to suggest arrangements that will provide assurance to the OfS and others that agreed governance standards across the sector are being met and improving. 

    Professor Peck said that too much of the regulatory compliance weight has been on the Accountable Officer role in the past.  He wants chairs to be empowered and governing bodies to see themselves as more central to the leadership and success of an institution.  And, in recognition of governing bodies stepping up to their roles, he says he has changed his mind about remuneration.  “Chairs and Audit Committee Chairs should be paid,” he said, noting the significant responsibilities they undertake. 

    This shift in the locus of accountability was signalled in November when Professor Peck wrote to chairs of institutions setting out the five risk areas that the OfS is currently focussed on.  These were: financial pressures, significant change programmes, third-party and off-campus delivery, misuse of public funding and legal compliance with freedom of speech legislation. 

    The letter said:

    In this context, the job of a governing body becomes increasingly important and demanding. [W]e agree with the view expressed by some in the sector that standards of governance are not consistent and, in some respects, may benefit from overall improvement.

    At the conference, he went further, pointing to the dangers of group-think in the sector, and directly questioning why members of Universities UK are the vice-chancellors themselves rather than the institutions they lead.  He points out that there are no independent members of the UUK Board as all the board members are vice-chancellors. Chairs of governing bodies had been forced to set up their own group, the CUC, outside of the UUK tent.  He doubted that UUK agendas and policy positions were much discussed at governing body meetings.  The challenge was implicit – what does it say about university governance if chairs are collectively excluded from discussions about sector policy, and are discussions with government about policy constrained by the lack of externality in UUK’s constitution?

    The conference also covered a lot of detailed ground about governance in the sector – the size of governing bodies, the balance of work done in sub-committees vs the board, governance of academic quality, the skills and expertise of board members and so on. And the findings of the Gillies Report about governance failures at the University of Dundee were never far from the conversation.  But with the weight of a ministerial address and the punchy input of the new Chair of the OfS, governance in HE takes on a new significance.  The framing of the CUC’s work on the Higher Education Code of Governance as a ‘refresh’ is perhaps understating the importance of this work.  

    HEPI has recently published a report on designing effective student governance, and a policy note on the ethical reform of university governance.

    Source link

  • New HEPI Report: Rethinking student voice: how can higher education design effective student governance?

    New HEPI Report: Rethinking student voice: how can higher education design effective student governance?

    Author:
    Darcie Jones

    Published:

    The new report Rethinking Student Voice: How higher education must design effective student governance (HEPI Report 195), written by Darcie Jones exposes a key issue within university governance: the marginalisation of student governors.

    With financial pressures intensifying across the sector, thee stakes for effective governance have never been higher. Yet, despite being core stakeholders within universities, many students on governing boards feel sidelined by opaque processes and exclusive norms. The evidence within this report reveals a persistent gap between symbolic representation and meaningful participation.

    However it’s not all bad news, the report also highlights what is possible when the student voice is taken seriously. Using examples of effective practice it demonstrates the transformation value of empowered student governance.

    Drawing on extensive evidence and sector insights, the report sets out clear, actionable reforms – from accessible governance culture, to improved recruitment, induction and development. They provide a pathway from why student perspectives and voices can be embedded at the heart of decision-making within universities.

    You can read the press release and access the full report here.

    Source link

  • New HEPI Policy Note: Views on University Governance

    New HEPI Policy Note: Views on University Governance

    Author:
    Professor Steven Jones on behalf of the Council for the Defence of British Universitie

    Published:

    HEPI’s new Policy Note finds striking consensus across the higher education community for more ethical, transparent and balanced university governance.

    Summarising responses to the draft Code of Ethical University Governance from the Council for the Defence of British Universities (CDBU), this Policy Note finds that 81% of the 129 submissions received endorse the principle of a new ethical code. This signals a widespread recognition that governance structures must better reflect the educational and public missions that universities serve.

    The revised CDBU Code directly responds to the concerns raised in the consultation and offers practical ways to reduce power imbalances, avoid insular decision-making and bring greater transparency to governor recruitment.

    For anyone interested in how universities can strengthen trust and increase transparency, the report makes for important reading. You can find the press release and link to the full text of the policy note here.

    The author of this report, and the author of a second report HEPI is publishing on governance in the run-up to Christmas will be at a free webinar on governance issues running on Thursday, 11 December 2025 from 10am to 11am. Sign up now to hear our speakers explore the key issues.

    Source link

  • Shared Governance

    Shared Governance

    Every college and university president I know has on their faculty the Angry Eight. Or the Furious Five. Sometimes just the Irked Individual. One president told me about an initiative that was resisted but finally passed with all but one vote in favor. That lone no was a victory: If the person had voted yes, it would have signaled compromise of values.

    When I ask whether the Angry Eight are still producing scholarship or doing good work in the classroom, you can guess the answer. After one president at a fancy-pants institution got a vote of no confidence, I read the many pages of materials filed against him. Then I googled each faculty name to check their research activity. Looks like these folks sure had a lot of free time.

    What’s most troubling to presidents, they say, is when the Angry Eight take the floor to rant and everyone else in the room starts looking at their phones or nails. No one stands up to the bullies. It’s hard for faculty to argue for decisions they know their colleagues won’t like; most of us remember being not picked for middle school teams. Plus, we know our peers will be evaluating us when it comes to tenure and promotion. Even when they’re not angry, it still always seems to be the same people doing all the talking. Not a great example of classroom management or collaborative decision-making.

    To be clear, the presidents and chancellors I know respect and admire their faculty. They say that the vast majority take their jobs seriously. They are devoted teachers, they publish, they shoulder the massive workload of helping run a university. This is also my experience. I am grateful to have colleagues willing to staff all the necessary committees. I’ve done enough service to know I’m generally more useful in the classroom and am smarter, nicer and more temperate on the page than I ever was when I served in Faculty Senate.

    As an assistant professor, I kept my big fat mouth shut in Senate. Before I had tenure, I knew I needed to learn the culture of the professoriate. But after a few years sitting silently through meetings wondering why so much time was devoted to copyediting policies and procedures and also hearing colleagues rant about how the administration was doing wrong and terrible things, I thought, Oh! This is how we were supposed to behave. Distrust and don’t bother to verify! Accuse and rant! So I learned to speak out. And never shut up.

    I wish I could blame my previous bad behavior to youthful arrogance or on a life spent in school without exposure to professional work, where you have supervisors and are expected to deliver. But nope. I came to a faculty role in my early 40s with plenty of “real world” experience. When I was staff as a university press editor and in an admissions office, I knew if I didn’t do my job, I could and should be fired. Post-tenure? Party time!

    Over time I was enculturated into an attitude of you’re not the boss of me. When administrators asked for reports, colleagues shrugged: We’re not going to do that. The reasoning? They always ask; nothing happens; it’s a waste of effort. Forget it.

    I’ve seen faculty members who, once promoted, stopped even pretending to do the scholarly work that had earned them promotion and just spent time on committees doing the “whatever it is, I’m against it’ dance.

    Which brings me back to shared governance, the thing that makes academe both fascinating and baffling to outsiders. Curriculum must be controlled by subject matter experts, otherwise you end up with, say, a health official who believes long-effective vaccines are harmful. Expertise matters. No physicist should decide which books writers read and no writer should be teaching organic chemistry.

    But neither should I be telling the basketball coach who needs more playing time (though I think I know) or the CFO which budget model to use. Sure, I worked in admissions a long time ago, but the enrollment VP knows more than I ever did.

    And yet, we faculty members often think we know more than we do about, well, everything and feel like we can express that in Faculty Senate.

    It would be an interesting experiment to ask everyone on a campus for a definition of “shared governance.” Like “Foucauldian,” it gets tossed around with more bravado than clarity. One former president told her faculty, “Shared governance is not the same as co-management.” Too often the Angry Eight are up in arms about things that are clearly outside their lane.

    And too often, free speech and academic freedom get conflated (though both may be a thing of the past, as we’ve been seeing in recent weeks). Faculty must have control over what goes on in the classroom. And we need leaders who will fight against legislators who’d prefer we include in our syllabi things like phrenology and pastafarianism.

    Here’s what scares me: That threat may not be as crazy as it seems. While most presidents are swept up tracking the deluge of doo-doo coming out of D.C. (and the states), faculty members tend not to keep up with general higher ed news and don’t realize how dire things are beyond their campus walls.

    Why? Because faculty are focused on doing their jobs (and doing them well, even as all of us are being asked to do more with less). Most don’t have the time, bandwidth or interest to track higher ed policy shifts, public distrust or enrollment crises. Most have not paid attention to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and its evil policy spawn. Many don’t even know how their own budgets work, clinging to the naïve belief that cutting football would rain millions down on academic affairs. Every campus has its magic-money-tree myth.

    And those who have been around a few blocks feel like they’ve heard this song before. Administrators come and go but we’ve been here and we’ll outlast you. The last guy who came in said we were broke. So did the guy before him. Whatev.

    Um. No. Right now things are pretty freaking dire.

    Presidents’ hardest task may be educating their campuses on these realities without scaring the bejesus out of everyone. How to convince people who have never really had to worry about job security that the sky is in fact falling? That the world has changed and we’re no longer respected? That not everyone thinks college is worth it and they’re showing that by not showing up? That AI has already changed everything?

    Our roles as teachers and scholars are more essential than ever, and we need to protect and defend higher ed to keep doing what we do best. It’s not the time to be fighting in Faculty Senate meetings about where the recycling bins should be placed on campus or if there are dust bunnies in offices or which departments, with four tenured faculty and three students, need to be preserved.

    Shared governance is an important way of keeping each other accountable. Yes, there are presidents who do hinky things. There are careerist and craven provosts. Some deans operate out of self-interest or play favorites. Many administrators never learned to be good managers. A system of checks and balances used to be built into our nation’s government is essential.

    The average tenure of a president has gone down from six years to about 60 days. When a president “resigns abruptly,” it’s not usually because they were embezzling or sleeping with students, but because they are caught between boards who want change and faculty who do not. They are faced with a number of seemingly insurmountable challenges from the outside. Before we take votes of no confidence or dig in for a fight about dust bunnies, it might be helpful to remember we can’t keep going through leaders like Kleenex during flu season if we want our institutions to survive.

    Given how many institutions are closing, merging or getting rid of faculty, I’m grateful there are still a few people who are willing to step up in higher education so I can just focus on my students and feel fortunate to still have a job.

    Though really, if I’m being honest, I still think that little point guard deserves more minutes.

    Rachel Toor is a contributing editor at Inside Higher Ed and the co-founder of The Sandbox, a weekly newsletter that allows presidents and chancellors to write anonymously. She is also a professor of creative writing and the author of books on weirdly diverse subjects. Reach her here with questions, comments and complaints compliments.

    Source link

  • Gender governance and the global grammar of illiberal inclusion

    Gender governance and the global grammar of illiberal inclusion

    by Ourania Filippakou

    Across global higher education, the terms of justice, equality and inclusion are being rewritten. In recent years, the rollback of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in the United States (Spitalniak, 2025) has unfolded alongside a global resurgence of anti-gender, ultra-nationalist, racialised and colonial politics (Brechenmacher, 2025). At the same time, the rise of authoritarian and far-right ideologies, together with deepening socioeconomic inequalities fuelled by an ascendant billionaire class (Klein and Taylor, 2025) and the growing portrayal of feminist and queer scholarship as ideological extremism (Pitts-Taylor and Wood, 2025), signal a profound shift in the rationalities shaping the politics of higher education. These developments do not reject inclusion; they refashion it. Equality becomes excess, dissent is recast as disorder, and inclusion is reconstituted as a technology of governance.

    This conjuncture, what Stuart Hall (Hall in Hall and Massey, 2010, p57) would call the alignment of economic, political and cultural forces, requires a vocabulary capable of capturing continuity and rupture. It also reflects the deepening crisis of neoliberalism, whose governing logics become more coercive as their legitimacy wanes (Beckert, 2025; Menand, 2023). As Hall reminds us, ‘a conjuncture is a period when different social, political, economic and ideological contradictions… or as Althusser said ‘fuse in a ruptural unity’’ (Hall in Hall and Massey, 2012, p57). A conjuncture, in this sense, does not resolve crisis but produces new configurations of ideological coherence and institutional control. In my recent article, ‘Managed Inclusion and the Politics of Erasure: Gender Governance in Higher Education under Neoliberal Authoritarianism’ (Review of Education, Pedagogy & Cultural Studies, 2025), I theorise these developments as a global grammar of illiberal inclusion: a political rationality that appropriates the language of equity while disabling its redistributive, democratic and epistemic force. The article develops a typology of symbolic, technocratic and transformative inclusion to examine how feminist, anti-caste and critical vocabularies are increasingly absorbed into systems of civility, visibility and procedural control. Transformative inclusion, the configuration most aligned with redistribution, dissent and epistemic plurality, is the one most forcefully neutralised.

    Across geopolitical contexts, from postcolonial states to liberal democracies, gender inclusion is increasingly appropriated not as a demand for justice but as a mechanism of control. The techniques of co-option vary, yet they consolidate into a shared political rationality in which equity is stripped of redistributive force and redeployed to affirm institutional legitimacy, nationalist virtue and market competitiveness. This is not a rupture with neoliberal governance but its intensification through more disciplinary and exclusionary forms. For example, in India, the National Education Policy 2020 invokes empowerment while enacting epistemic erasure, systematically marginalising the knowledges of women from subordinated caste, class and religious communities (Peerzada et al, 2024; Patil, 2023; Singh, 2023). At the same time, state-led campaigns such as Beti Bachao elevate women’s visibility only within ideals of modesty and nationalist virtue (Chhachhi, 2020). In Hungary, the 2018 ban on gender studies aligned higher education with labour-market imperatives and nationalist agendas (Barát, 2022; Zsubori, 2018). In Turkey, reforms under Erdoğan consolidate patriarchal norms while constraining feminist organising (Zihnioğlu and Kourou, 2025). Here, gender inclusion is tolerated only when it reinforces state agendas and restricts dissent.

    Elsewhere, inclusion is recast as ideological deviance. In the United States, the Trump-era rollback of DEI initiatives and reproductive rights has weaponised inclusion as a spectre of radicalism, disproportionately targeting racialised and LGBTQ+ communities (Amnesty International, 2024; Chao-Fong, 2025). In Argentina, Milei abolished the Ministry of Women, describing feminism as fiscally irresponsible (James, 2024). In Italy, Meloni’s government invokes ‘traditional values’ to erode anti-discrimination frameworks (De Giorgi et al, 2023, p.v11i1.6042). In these cases, inclusion is not merely neutralised but actively vilified, its political charge reframed as cultural threat.

    Even when inclusion is celebrated, it is tethered to respectability and moral legibility. In France, femonationalist discourses instrumentalise gender equality to legitimise anti-Muslim policy (Farris, 2012; Möser, 2022). In Greece, conservative statecraft reframes inclusion through familialist narratives while dismantling equality infrastructures (Bempeza, 2025). These patterns reflect a longer political repertoire in which authoritarian and ultra-nationalist projects mobilise idealised domestic femininity to naturalise social hierarchies. As historian Diana Garvin (Garvin quoted in Matei, 2025) notes, ‘what fascisms old and new have in common is they tend to look to women to fill in the gaps that the state misses’, with contemporary ‘womanosphere’ influencers in the US reviving fantasies of domestic bliss that obscure intensified gendered precarity (Matei, 2025).

    Such gendered constructions coexist with escalating violence. More than 50.000 women and girls were killed by intimate partners or family members in 2024, which means one woman or girl was killed every ten minutes, or 137 every day, according to the latest UNODC and UN Women femicide report (UNODC/UN Women, 2025). This sits within a wider continuum of harm: 83.000 women and girls were intentionally killed last year, and the report finds no sign of real progress. It also highlights a steep rise in digital violence, including harassment, stalking, gendered disinformation and deepfakes, which increasingly spills into offline contexts and contributes to more lethal forms of harm. These global patterns intersect with regional crises. For example, more than 7.000 women were killed in India in gender-related violence in 2022 (NCRB, 2023); eleven women are murdered daily in femicides across Latin America (NU CEPAL, 2024). At the same time, masculinist influencers such as Andrew Tate cultivate transnational publics organised around misogyny (Adams, 2025; Wescott et al, 2024). As UN Secretary-General António Guterres (2025) warns: ‘Instead of mainstreaming equal rights, we are seeing the mainstreaming of misogyny’.

    These global pressures reverberate across institutions that have historically positioned themselves as democratic spaces, including universities, which increasingly recast gender equity as a reputational risk or cultural flashpoint rather than a democratic obligation (D’Angelo et al, 2024; McEwen and Narayanaswamy, 2023). Equity becomes an emblem of modernity to be audited, displayed and curated, rather than a demand for justice. Ahmed’s (2012) theorisation of non-performativity is essential here: institutions declare commitments to equality precisely to contain the transformations such commitments would require. In this context, symbolic and technocratic inclusion flourish, while the structural conditions for transformative inclusion continue to narrow.

    These shifts reflect broader political and economic formations. Brown (2015) shows how neoliberal reason converts justice claims into performance demands, hollowing out democratic vocabularies. Fraser’s (2017) account of ‘progressive neoliberalism’ illuminates the terrain in which market liberalism coupled with selective diversity politics absorbs emancipatory discourse while preserving inequality. Patnaik (2021) argues that the rise of neofascism is a political necessity for neoliberalism in crisis, as rights are redefined as privileges and inclusion is repurposed to stabilise inequality. In this conjuncture, these tendencies intensify into what Giroux (2018, 2021, 2022a) names ‘neoliberal fascism’, a formation structured by three interlocking fundamentalisms: a market fundamentalism that commodifies all aspects of life, a religious fundamentalism that moralises inequality; and a regime of manufactured ignorance and militarised illiteracy that discredits critical thought and erases historical memory (Giroux 2022b, p48-54).

    The United States now offers a further manifestation of this global pattern, illustrating how attacks on DEI can function as a broader assault on higher education. As recent analyses of US politics show, the first and particularly the second Trump administration is actively modelling itself on Viktor Orbán’s illiberal statecraft, centralising executive power, purging public institutions and mobilising ‘family values’ and anti-‘woke’ politics to reshape education and media governance (Giroux, 2017; Smith, 2025; Kauffmann, 2025). The dismantling of DEI under the Trump administration, framed as a defence of merit, free speech and fiscal responsibility (The White House, 2025), marks the beginning of a wider attempt to consolidate political influence over higher education. Executive orders targeting DEI have been followed by lawsuits, funding withdrawals and intensified federal scrutiny, prompting universities such as Michigan, Columbia and Chicago to scale back equality infrastructures, cut programmes and reduce humanities provision (cf Bleiler, 2025; Pickering, Cosgrove and Massel, 2025; Quinn, 2025). These developments do not simply eliminate DEI; they position anti-gender politics as a mechanism of disciplining universities, narrowing intellectual autonomy and extending political control over academic life. They exemplify wider global tendencies in which inclusion becomes a field through which illiberal projects consolidate authority. The assault on DEI is thus not a uniquely American phenomenon but part of a broader authoritarian turn in which inclusion is recoded to stabilise, rather than challenge, existing power.

    Understanding gender governance in higher education through this conjunctural lens reveals not merely the erosion of equity but the emergence of a political formation that reconfigures inclusion into an apparatus of civility, visibility and administrative control. These tendencies are not aberrations but expressions of a larger global grammar that binds emancipatory rhetoric to authoritarian-neoliberal governance. The result is not the dilution of equality but its rearrangement as a practice of containment.

    The implications for the sector are profound. If inclusion is increasingly reorganised through metrics, decorum and procedural compliance, then reclaiming its democratic potential requires an epistemic and institutional shift. Inclusion needs to be understood not as a reputational asset but as a commitment to justice, redistribution and collective struggle. This means recovering equality as political and pedagogical labour: the work of confronting injustice, protecting dissent and renewing the public imagination. Academic freedom and equality are inseparable: without equality, freedom becomes privilege; without freedom, equality becomes performance.

    As Angela Davis (Davis quoted in Gerges, 2023) reminds us: ‘Diversity without structural transformation simply brings those who were previously excluded into a system as racist and misogynist as it was before… There can be no diversity and inclusion without transformation and justice.’ And as Henry Giroux (2025) argues, democracy depends on how societies fight over language, memory and possibility. That struggle now runs through the university itself, shaping its governance, its epistemic life and the courage to imagine more just and democratic possibilities.

    Ourania Filippakou is a Professor of Education at Brunel University of London. Her research interrogates the politics of higher education, examining universities as contested spaces where power, inequality, and resistance intersect. Rooted in critical traditions, she explores how higher education can foster social justice, equity, and transformative change.

    Author: SRHE News Blog

    An international learned society, concerned with supporting research and researchers into Higher Education

    Source link

  • Podcast: Access, governance, festival vibes

    Podcast: Access, governance, festival vibes

    This week on the podcast, live from our Festival in London, we discuss access and social mobility as the Office for Students reshuffles its leadership, and the Sutton Trust publishes a new report that paints a sobering picture.

    Plus we discuss university governance and our new paper for the Post-18 Project, and we capture the vibes from our event, from the best quotes to the big debates shaping the sector’s future.

    With Alistair Jarvis, Chief Executive at Advance HE, Janet Lord, Deputy Pro Vice Chancellor for Education at Manchester Metropolitan University, and Michael Salmon, News Editor at Wonkhe – and presented by Jim Dickinson, Associate Editor at Wonkhe.

    Sutton Trust: Degrees of Difference

    OfS: Director for Fair Access and Participation steps down from regulator

    Earning the license: How to reform university governance in the UK

    You can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, Spotify, Acast, Amazon Music, Deezer, RadioPublic, Podchaser, Castbox, Player FM, Stitcher, TuneIn, Luminary or via your favourite app with the RSS feed.

    Source link

  • How to reform university governance in the UK – The Post-18 Project

    How to reform university governance in the UK – The Post-18 Project

    Advance HE (2025) Shaping the future of higher education governance: Ten priorities to enhance higher education governance. News & Views. London: Advance HE.

    Berenschot (2017) Van toezicht naar verantwoording: rapportage hoger onderwijs [From Supervision to Accountability: Higher Education Report]. Utrecht: Berenschot.

    Commissie Behoorlijk Bestuur (2013) Een lastig gesprek: rapport van de Commissie Behoorlijk Bestuur [A Difficult Conversation: Report of the Committee on Proper Governance]. The Hague: Commissie Behoorlijk Bestuur.

    Commissie Behoorlijk Bestuur (2013) Een lastig gesprek. Over de (interne) dialoog in semipublieke instellingen [A Difficult Conversation: On the (Internal) Dialogue in Semi-Public Institutions]. Den Haag: Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken en Koninkrijksrelaties.

    Commissie onderzoek financiële problematiek Amarantis (2012) Autonomie verplicht: Rapport onderzoek financiële problematiek Amarantis [Autonomy required: Report on the financial problems at Amarantis]. Den Haag: Commissie onderzoek financiële problematiek Amarantis.

    Department for Education, Department for Work and Pensions and Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (2025) Post-16 Education and Skills. White Paper CP 1412. London: HM Government.

    Dickinson, J. (2024) ‘We could change the governors, we could change the governance’, Wonkhe blog, 24 January.

    Dickinson, J. (2025) ‘From where student governors sit, Dundee isn’t the only institution with governance challenges’, Wonkhe blog, 24 July.

    Education, Children and Young People Committee (2025) Stage 1 Report on the Tertiary Education and Training (Funding and Governance) (Scotland) Bill. Edinburgh: Scottish Parliament.

    Gillies, D. (2023) Governance and the public good: the future of higher education governance in Scotland. Edinburgh: Scottish Government.

    Gillen, S. (2023) Building better boards: How to govern for sustainable success. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

    Goodijk, R. (2012) What’s wrong with supervision in semi-public organisations? Failing supervisors, abuses and suggestions for improvement.

    Jones, S. & Harris, D. (2024) University governance: views from the inside. Council for the Defence of British Universities.

    Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken en Koninkrijksrelaties (n.d.) Wet normering topinkomens (WNT).

    Ministerie van Onderwijs, Cultuur en Wetenschap (2021) Evaluatie wet versterking bestuurskracht [Evaluation of the Law to Strengthen Governance]. Brief regering, Kamerstuk 34 251, Nr. 95. Den Haag: Ministerie van Onderwijs, Cultuur en Wetenschap.

    Office for Students (2019) “Statement on De Montfort University investigation”

    Office for Students (2024) Draft strategy 2025 to 2030. Consultation document. London: Office for Students.

    Office for Students (2024) Subcontractual arrangements in higher education. Insight brief. London: Office for Students.

    Office for Students (2025) Annual financial sustainability analysis: Financial performance and resilience of English higher education providers 2025-26. London: Office for Students.

    Rijksoverheid (2013) Toezien op publieke belangen: Naar een verantwoorde invulling van rijksinspecties [Safeguarding Public Interests: Towards a Responsible Role for National Inspectorates]. Den Haag: Rijksoverheid.

    Savage, N. (2025) ‘Weekend Reading: Provoking changes in higher education, some reflections on governance’, HEPI blog. London: Higher Education Policy Institute.

    Scottish Funding Council (2025) SFC’s Expectations of Good Governance. SFC Announcement SFC/AN/19/2025. Edinburgh: Scottish Funding Council.

    Steering Committee for Efficiency Studies in Universities (Chair: Sir Alex Jarratt) (1985) Report of the Steering Committee for Efficiency Studies in Universities [Jarratt Report 1985]. London: Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals.

    Universities UK, GuildHE, Committee of University Chairs (2024) Franchise governance framework.

    Versterking van de bestuurskracht van onderwijsinstellingen (2015). Eerste Kamer der Staten-Generaal.

    Westerling, J., Hien, L. and Plumb, N. (2025) Closing the void: Can we reconnect politics with associational life? London: Power to Change.

    Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid (WRR) (2013) Toezien op publieke belangen: Naar een verantwoorde invulling van rijksinspecties [Safeguarding Public Interests: Towards a Responsible Role for National Inspectorates]. The Hague: WRR.

    Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid (WRR) (2013) Toezien op publieke belangen: Naar een verruimd perspectief op rijkstoezicht [Safeguarding Public Interests: Towards a Broadened Perspective on National Oversight]. Den Haag: Amsterdam University Press.

    Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid (WRR) (2014) Van tweeluik naar driehoeken: Versterking van interne checks and balances bij semipublieke organisaties [From Diptychs to Triangles: Strengthening Internal Checks and Balances in Semi-Public Organisations]. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

    Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid (WRR) (2015) Improving internal checks and balances in semi-public organisations: synopsis of WRR report no. 91 [Van tweeluik naar driehoeken]. The Hague: WRR.

    Source link

  • Victorian inquiry into uni governance – Campus Review

    Victorian inquiry into uni governance – Campus Review

    Universities will face even more scrutiny in the coming months after a third government announced it will probe the governance and management of public higher education institutions.

    Please login below to view content or subscribe now.

    Membership Login

    Source link

  • Expert council on governance reports – Campus Review

    Expert council on governance reports – Campus Review

    Universities will be required to justify how much is spent on consultants and disclose whether vice-chancellors are drawing multiple incomes as recommended by a governance committee on Saturday.

    Please login below to view content or subscribe now.

    Membership Login

    Source link