Students participating in management decisions starts in the classroom and should be supported right through to governing bodies, a student experience expert has said.
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Facilitron provides facility rental and management support for some of the largest school districts in the U.S., including Florida’s Broward County Public Schools, Nevada’s Clark County School District and California’s San Diego Unified School District.
That broad reach helped the company design a governance framework that goes beyond school boards’ existing model policies to encompass administrative regulations, site manuals, renter terms and audit tools, the company says. It draws on data from more than 15,000 schools, many of which have outdated, inconsistent and unenforceable facility-use policies, “exposing where current systems fail,” according to the company.
“Every district on our platform has a data trail that tells a story,” Facilitron Chief Marketing Officer Trent Allen said in an email. “Even when data is missing — because poor policy and enforcement means a lot of facility use never gets documented — you can still see the problems, like a black hole bending light in its direction.”
Allen said many of those problems have a financial dimension. For example, many districts offer automatic subsidies for registered nonprofits, regardless of the actual public benefit the organization provides — so a national nonprofit with high participation fees gets effectively the same treatment as a grassroots group with a much smaller budget, Allen said.
Districts’ facility-use policies — and the state statutes enabling them — leave money on the table in other ways, like sweetheart deals for school employees, rates that remain static for years, and ambiguous language that discourages districts from tapping their facilities’ full value.
As an example, Allen said, some Tennessee districts interpret a vaguely worded state statute prohibiting “private profit” in school facility use to mean that only nonprofit organizations can rent them, creating a situation where “essentially every use becomes a subsidized use.” That leaves out the possibility that private companies could use the facilities for charitable or other purposes.
Additionally, many school boards give school administrators or facilities managers free rein to adjust or waive fees, or approve informal use outside the plain text of board policy, he said.
The upshot of all this, Allen added, is that larger districts forgo millions in potential revenue annually from facility rentals while creating conditions ripe for favoritism and inequity.
Once one group gets access under favorable terms, every similar group is usually given the same,” he said. “Suddenly the district is on the hook for hundreds of thousands of dollars. It quickly runs into the millions and it is never budgeted for.”
Facilitron says its national governance standard pushes back on the status quo by laying out detailed model school board policies and administrative regulations; a “modular policy toolkit” and site-level operations manual; a national terms and conditions template; and a “facility use audit framework,” which the company describes as “a diagnostic tool that reveals cost, risk and underperformance.”
The national governance standard also includes frequently asked questions, case studies and other resources for school boards.
“We require annual reporting, including an estimate of total subsidization. We make cost recovery the governing philosophy [and] move away from ‘nonprofit’ as the trigger for discounts, because that’s the wrong proxy for public benefit. And we separate policy into layers — board-level rules, administrative regulations, and site-level guidance — so principals aren’t left to invent their own rules,” Allen said.
Universities are facing the ‘perfect storm’ of challenges from several areas, not least financial and strategic sustainability, at a time when the government has many more competing priorities for scarce public resources. The situation is going to get much worse in the medium term as financial pressures rightly stimulate calls for greater accountability and a consequent erosion of the sector’s perceived and much-prized autonomy. The only way forward in the short term must therefore be for the sector itself to provoke change by Boards and non-executive directors (NEDs), assuming a more active role in challenging orthodoxy in much the same way as NEDs in the private sector.
The new Chair of the OfS, Edward Peck, has an unenviable in-tray. What the sector needs, alongside his appointment, is a greater degree of external insight to shake up the balance of power within the traditional governance model. I’ve worked for most of my life in higher education and the legal sector and have often been struck by the similarities in terms of management and governance issues. The legal services market has moved on somewhat from when it displayed an inherent resistance to change, a tendency to look to each other for solutions rather than externally and a blind faith that only lawyers operating within the partnership model could manage the business. Universities are still in a time warp typified by the fact that most of the organisations that purport to contribute to change by offering ‘partnerships’, guidance, consultancy or codes of practice are funded from within the sector and unlikely to recommend radical change or depart from sector orthodoxy.
Another lesson that could be learned from the legal services market is the greater use of external know-how and resources. Some thirty years ago, the Practical Law Company achieved considerable success by working with the best lawyers from a range of successful firms to create high-quality authored legal resources and software tools which were licensed to firms. Hitherto, that would have been regarded by the profession as relinquishing control over their crown jewels, eroding professional integrity, not to mention autonomy. The result was that lawyers were able to work more efficiently with enhanced productivity and greater confidence, focusing on providing solutions to clients’ complex problems. There is no reason why that model shouldn’t deliver similar outcomes within the higher education sector. Collaborative know-how would produce research outputs that inform teaching and learning with the added advantage that they are based on practice rather than recycled material from another academic in the form of a textbook. There are now over one hundred law schools in the UK each developing their own teaching and learning materials at a considerable cost and with varying degrees of quality. I see no reason why such a model could not deliver significant cost savings across disciplines and free staff time to focus on the delivery of teaching and learning innovation.
At one level there is no incentive to change, especially given the prevailing veil of protection provided by current interpretations of academic autonomy. I cannot speak for other disciplines, but given the stagnation in leadership of legal education, the legal services market is currently better served by employers than higher education. In part the issue is one of culture typified by the sector’s attitude to AI, as one commentator recently remarked, ‘universities are more concerned about AI, rather than with it …’. There is more debate about students using it as a vehicle for cheating or copyright issues than as a vehicle to enhance teaching and learning and create a seamless transition into the workplace. In general, technology in higher education is not embraced transformatively but defensively.
I was one of the few independent Board members of HEFCE (2002-08) and chaired the Audit and Risk Committee. As part of our engagement, we instigated a series of case study seminars for chairs and members of institutional audit committees with no members of their executive team present. The programme was much appreciated but we were surprised by the relatively low level of awareness of key risks, issues around internal audit and accountability and lack of engagement in terms of quality assurance. It’s interesting that many of the issues on the risk register then are a variation of the same issues that confront universities today. The impact of technology, an increasingly competitive environment, funding especially over-reliance on overseas income, changes in public policy, globalisation and students as consumers of higher education services.
Most of the above are issues that every global business model, regardless of ownership structure, sector, or location, has had to confront over the same timescale, without the level of resources available to higher education. Indeed, some universities have confronted them very well. So why is it that a growing number of universities are manifestly failing to address these issues when they should have been painfully aware of them for years? We are already seeing the likely next generation of entirely predictable risks in the growing number of institutions rushing to set up campuses in London and, worse still, in India and the Middle East at a time when they are barely sustainable. Will such initiatives deliver medium-term revenue growth, or are they merely off-balance-sheet Vice Chancellor vanity projects? And why are they not more aggressively challenged by NEDs?
There needs to be something of a culture change in the balance of power as between executive and non-executive roles. It is governance that dictates the rules of the game, especially in the relationship between the CEO (in most cases the Vice-Chancellor or Principal) and Chair. Government and the regulator need to be more prescriptive rather than rely on consultative services provided by those bodies that are part of a self-regulatory model. Anyone who doubts the need for change should read the Scottish Funding Council’s investigative report on Dundee University, which represents a massive failure of management and governance. Cultural issues were not the primary cause of the financial collapse at Dundee, but as observed in the report, ‘aspects of the culture of the institution … , may however have facilitated or been associated with a lack of transparency and of the limited challenge to the prevailing discourse on financial matters’
Action in the following areas would assist in generating such a culture change:
Although the Office for Students (OfS) is beginning to engage more directly with providers given the emerging financial environment, they are theoretically hide-bound by the statutory institutional autonomy that universities enjoy. They ‘will not provide advice to providers on how they should run their organisation. Providers should look to other sources, for example to sector bodies, for such advice and support.’ Surely in such circumstances a regulator should be suggesting that they seek advice from their own Board or externally rather than organisations that are not independent and consist largely of retired senior executives from the sector. I can imagine the outcry if such a model was replicated in the private sector if a board were asleep at the wheel.
Institutions are required to have ‘adequate and effective management and governance arrangements.’ Therein lies the problem. In a culture based on the presumption of autonomy, it’s very difficult to provoke change based on a standard so low as ‘adequacy’ and advice from the sector. There are many interpretations of autonomy, but the concept is too often used as a defensive comfort blanket to resist change or, worse still, justify the executives’ vanity projects.
The current regulatory regime, based in part on a self-regulatory model, is somewhat naïve and reminiscent of that which prevailed many years ago in respect of company regulation in the private sector and contributed to the debate on the ‘unacceptable face of capitalism’. For example, the Committee of University Chairs (CUC) code declares that the code ‘is not compulsory, governing bodies can determine based on the advice of the executive which parts of the code apply to them …’ There is no longer a need for an annual Head of Internal Audit Report and the OfS no longer require submission of the Annual Report of an institution’s Audit Committee. Indeed, there is nothing in the guidance any more compelling registered providers to have an Audit Committee.
Within this benign regulatory environment, the sector has received substantial funding on a headcount basis at a time when they should have been preparing for wholly predictable changes. Boards should be looking much more clearly on value for money issues. They continue to create massive Super Faculties which are unmanageable, stifle innovation and leave staff isolated. Decision-making processes are attenuated, and there is hostility to learning from external sources that are well ahead in confronting and managing change. There has been a proliferation of roles and reporting lines at the top with very little focus on efficient delivery at the coal face but fragmentation in terms of leadership.
Sadly, the position is even worse in Scotland where legislative changes in 2016 made the appointment process and composition of Boards even larger and more cumbersome and much less effective decision makers, hence the Dundee fiasco.
The current governance culture encouraged by the legislation and embraced by the sector and the regulators creates the impression that the sector should be treated differently from any other sector. In my experience, the fundamental role of NEDs is the same irrespective of the corporate status: to appoint and monitor the performance of the executive and to sign off on the strategy and rigorously monitor performance, delivery structures, risk and compliance. Legal status will shape strategy in terms of charitable status or shareholder value in the private sector but that’s no justification to deter NEDs from carrying out the primary role of holding the CEO’s feet to the fire and continuously monitoring and measuring executive performance. The way forward may be to engage them more directly within the structures of the institution, taking care that they don’t cross the line into the executive function.
I operated as a CEO in the sector for twenty years and a NED on both side of the fence. In my NED roles I have always operated by asking questions and seeking clarity on issues that I wouldn’t want raised if I were the CEO!
Nigel Savage
I am grateful to James Aston (BDO) the leading independent authority on HE governance, for a couple of stimulating conversations on some of the issues.
This week on the podcast we examine the challenges facing UK higher education as another tough academic year begins with government finances stretched and the sector languishing at the bottom of political priorities.
With the post-16 education white paper still pending and rumours swirling about tuition fee increases and international student levies, what does the year ahead hold for universities already struggling with funding pressures?
Plus we discuss the latest crackdown on international students as 130,000 are warned about visa overstaying and further restrictions on dependants loom, and ask whether new governance recommendations – from paying board members to live-streaming meetings – can restore confidence in university leadership after high-profile failures.
With Anton Muscatelli, Principal at University of Glasgow, Dani Payne, Head of Education and Social Mobility at the Social Market Foundation, James Coe, Associate Editor at Wonkhe, and presented by Jim Dickinson, Associate Editor at Wonkhe.
What’s coming up for HE policy in 2025–26
For student leaders, it’s been a Cruel Summer
Enhancing higher education governance will require agility and accountability
From where student governors sit, Dundee isn’t the only institution with governance challenges
The exploitation of international students begins before they enrol
What’s happened with dependants since the PGT ban?
International students and asylum claims
Home Office Eyes More Restrictions On International Student Visas
The start of the new academic year has all eyes looking ahead. As we all know, prediction is very difficult, particularly about the future, as physicist Niels Bohr cheekily put it. At the same time, the future is already here—it is just unevenly distributed, as writer William Gibson said. In other words, while predictions are difficult, we have evidence of what we might expect. This essay applies those logics to higher education governance.
If predictions about the future are difficult, predictions about the future of governance might be outright foolish. Nevertheless, it is worth speculating and preparing.
Since higher education is in the headlines—if not the headline in the news—boards are likely to be more aware and informed of the issues and trends in higher education than they were in the past. This is particularly true because of federal action (I once would have said “policy,” but we are not seeing policy being made or even discussed) making news in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and other outlets read by trustees. Boards read about the Trump executive orders, drastic and devastating reductions in federal research funding, and attacks on institutional autonomy, as well as on specific universities: Harvard, Penn, Columbia, George Mason. The attacks on inclusion and student support for underrepresented groups (even the phrase “underrepresented groups”), DEI or its dismantling, and antisemitism are all subjects of conversations among trustees. Many are having parallel conversations in their corporate and law offices.
The demographic cliff—the long-foretold decline in the numbers of traditional-age students—has only gotten closer. Boards are worried about enrollment. There is concern over international students who are expected to seek alternatives other than the U.S.
For those universities with Division I athletics, there are complexities associated with name, image and likeness rights; the coaching hiring carousel; the transfer portal; and direct student athlete compensation. Boards like to be associated with winning.
Inflation over the past few years has made costs higher and budgets tighter. This means not only that there are fewer operational resources, but fewer dollars have gone into infrastructure. Therefore, deferred maintenance is growing and worrying many.
Then there is AI. As a Princeton University professor wrote in a recent article in The New Yorker, “The White House’s chain-jerk mugging feels, frankly, like a sideshow. The juggernaut actually barreling down the quad is A.I., coming at us with shocking speed.”
Underlining all of this is finances. For boards, particularly those at tuition-dependent institutions as well as those at research funding–dependent institutions, financial well-being is still king. It can and will continue to dominate board conversations. And in extreme cases, it risks becoming the only thing these boards care about.
What does the above mean regarding the near-term future for governance? Before answering that question, I need to acknowledge the tremendous variation in boards and their composition as well as in the mission and geographic contexts in which they are operating. Governance generally is not governance locally. At the risk of overgeneralizing:
In other instances, the boards themselves (or at least a majority of members) may be activist. We have seen such examples in Florida, Idaho, Texas and Virginia. This is a different conversation altogether, when it is the full board as compared to individuals.
While the above are predictions, solid and careful preparation may suit presidents well. It’s best to take that umbrella rather than get caught out in the rain.
This calendar year has been one like no other. A safe bet is to predict that this academic year will be no different. The ideas above may be alarmist. Many boards will continue to govern effectively and do so in ways consistent with past practices. For that be thankful. Other boards may take it upon themselves to look in the mirror and move forward in new, positive and more constructive ways. Be even more thankful for that. As one experienced general counsel said to me, “If trustees truly want to guide their institutions and make sure that their problem-solving and future planning decisions are the best they can be, they need to keep their governance blades sharp.”
NSO First Assistant Ombudsman Sarah Bendall spoke to Campus Review editor Erin Morley about how student complaints reflect current sector issues, like governance, and how it will work with the Australian Tertiary Education Commission (ATEC).
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Today Advance HE is publishing Shaping the future of HE governance, the findings of our “big conversation” on higher education governance.
The report draws from wide-ranging engagement with governors, chairs, institutional leaders, board secretaries and others, conducted in partnership with the Committee of University Chairs (CUC), Association of Heads of University Administration (AHUA), Universities UK, GuildHE and Independent HE. The research examined the effectiveness of current governance arrangements, considered good practice from other sectors and identified what needs to improve or change.
The big conversation explored the diversity of provider types, missions and individual contexts across UK higher education. Diversity and differences exist in governance arrangements, and this is appropriate to reflect the diversity of missions and scales which need differing governance arrangements.
The findings from this research will feed into the CUC’s current review of higher education governance, of which I’m a steering group member. I will also share the findings with the Office for Students and Department for Education – both are showing a growing interest in how higher education institutions are governed.
Here are some of the factors that should be priorities when considering governance reform.
At the heart of good governance is culture – and this should be central to efforts to enhance governance. The research found that culture is the biggest factor in determining the difference between a highly effective and a less effective board.
This can be hard to measure, takes time to get right, and is a constant work in progress. This includes the culture of getting the right balance of challenge and support – and where the right level of information is supplied to governors, but equally where governors themselves have a sufficient degree of expertise and curiosity to ask the right questions and know when to probe and challenge.
The right culture requires a sophisticated relationship between executive and board and specifically the head of institution, the chair and the secretary to the board. An open relationship, with no surprises, and a healthy tension of constructive challenge. Clear schemes of delegated authority, clarifying the difference between accountability and responsibility, can help to support this.
As the context and issues change, higher education governance also needs to adapt to meet new challenges.
Just because governance arrangements were suitable and effective in the past shouldn’t lead to the conclusion that no change is needed. There are examples of excellent practice in the sector. There are also weaknesses which should be the focus for improvement. It is necessary for institutions to regularly review, evolve and improve their governance arrangements.
To meet current challenges, agility is needed to support effective transformation and change. How can governing bodies be supported to get the right balance between the speed of decision-making and ensuring good governance oversight? Is the size and composition of the governing body helping or hindering effective decision-making?
Consideration should be given to what can be done to maximise the time that governing bodies spend on discussion of strategy, strategic issues and oversight of major risk – and minimise time spent on processing bureaucracy. This may require ruthlessness about focussing on matters which are strategic, a regulatory or statutory requirement or of material significance (financially, reputationally, or otherwise). If an item does not meet these three tests, there should be challenge as to why it is taking up board time.
The quality of strategic decision making can be enhanced by ensuring that the board contributes to formative thinking, giving governors the opportunity to challenge and scrutinise effectively, ensuring time to properly examine information to allow for evidence-based decisions in the context of the strategy.
Are there examples – perhaps from other sectors – that can better enable governing bodies to support change, effectively balancing the need to manage risk with the desire to be agile, innovative and entrepreneurial?
Institutions should also consider how they can better communicate their governance story – openly and creatively – to staff, students, partners and the public. There’s an opportunity to demonstrating how institutions are governed in the public interest. This can include more proactive and transparent approaches to showing adherence to codes and compliance to regulations.
Given the risks (financial, international) and changes (digital, regulatory) facing the sector it has never been more important to support governors appropriately – and this should include proactively identifying and supporting development opportunities.
This could include both HE-specific regulatory issues and learning about good governance best practice from other sectors. Beyond initial governor induction, institutions should support continuous professional development for non-executive board members throughout terms of service and ensure structured training opportunities for governance support professionals.
The insights from our big conversation will provide a foundation and stimulus for meaningful change and continuous improvement in HE sector governance. The priorities identified will shape how Advance HE evolves its approach to governance support, board effectiveness reviews and development programmes.
There are a couple of typical ways to “read” Pamela Gillies’ investigation report into financial oversight and decision making at the University of Dundee.
One is to imagine that the issues in it are fairly unique to that university – that a particular set of people and circumstances were somehow not picked up properly by a governing body apparently oblivious to what was happening below the surface.
In that extreme, the key failing was not doing all the Scottish Code for Good Higher Education Governance asks its governors to do.
Another is to wonder whether, even with a clean bill of “good governance” health, it could happen elsewhere.
One of the things that is fascinating about organisational failure is the way in which governance tends to be picked up as a problem – because it can lead to the conclusion that because organisational failure is not widespread, the governance issues must be local.
If you position governance exclusively as scrutiny, it could of course be the case that the culture of governance is weak across the board – it’s just that most senior teams in universities don’t make the mistakes that were evidently made at Dundee, and thus we’d never know.
After all, nobody questions governance when things are going well, when funding is flowing and when student numbers are on the up. If anything, in that positioning, the danger is in complacency – because governance needs to come into its own to avoid mistakes and catch issues before they become catastrophes.
When Gillies’ report was published, I couldn’t avoid recalling countless conversations I’ve had over the years with student members of governing bodies about everything from the lateness of papers to the culture of decision making.
So to test the waters, I pulled out 14 governance issues from the investigation and put a brief (anonymous) survey out to students’ union officers who are members of their Board, Council or Court.
I can’t claim that 41 responses (captured in the second half of June and the first half of July) are representative of the whole sector, and nor are they representative of the whole of the governing bodies on which respondents have sat.
But there is enough material in there to cause us concern about how universities around the UK are governed.
One issue that Pam Gillies picked up was leadership dominance, where the vice chancellor and chair were found to have “behaved like they have everything under control” while governing bodies failed to provide adequate challenge.
When we asked whether student governors had experienced leadership that “routinely dominates discussions, controls narratives to present overly positive pictures, or makes it difficult for governors to raise concerns,” 68 per cent said they’d experienced this “a lot”. Another 27 per cent said “a little.”
That’s 95 per cent of respondents experiencing some level of what one might generously call “narrative management” by their senior teams.
The comments flesh out what this looks like in practice. One student governor observed:
You are told at the start that your job is to manage the VC and the SMT but they manage the governors. The Chair and the VC behave like they have everything under control. The room just does not seem interested in education or the student experience, more whether it is running as a business.
Another captured the emotional impact:
Whenever I have asked a question or said something even questioning let alone critical about UEG it’s like I have suggested burning down their office. They are allowed to be both over-defensive and over-reassuring rather than treat contributions from me and some of the other more vocal governors as contributions to thinking. It makes the whole thing quite pointless.
It’s not just about dominance – it’s also about active silencing. Gillies found that dissenting voices were marginalised and that “critical challenge was not welcomed.” Our survey bears this out.
When asked about governors being “shut down, spoken over, dismissed as ‘obstructive,’ or otherwise discouraged when trying to challenge decisions,” 51 per cent reported experiencing this “a lot”. Another 37 per cent said “a little”.
The mechanisms are subtle but effective. One respondent noted being warned at the start of their term that the previous student president had not been “constructive” and that to get things done, they needed to be “constructive” instead. The implied threat was clear – play nice or be frozen out.
It was made very clear to me at the start that the previous President had not been ‘constructive’ and that if I wanted to get things done I needed to be ‘constructive’. All year I have felt torn – other governors would regularly ask me at the meal what was ‘really going on’ but I never felt like I could be critical in the actual meeting because of the ‘partnership’. I feel like the VC was under a lot of pressure to perform for the governors, and that makes it impossible to say anything about what you think is going wrong.
Another described the choreography of exclusion:
The power dynamics are fascinating if you’re into that sort of thing. Watch who the Chair makes eye contact with, whose contributions get minuted vs. ‘noted’, who gets interrupted vs. who can ramble for 10 minutes unchecked. I never got the premium treatment – I feel that the Chair needs some feedback on whose thoughts they obviously value.
That isolation extends beyond meetings. Multiple respondents noted deliberate strategies to separate them from support:
One tendency we picked up on a lot was to isolate me from support, I wasn’t allowed to discuss the papers with my CEO or have my CEO in the room. It’s only student on the board. They say that’s for confidentiality, but everyone else in the room is clearly discussing their issues with people who can put everything into a context. I think it should be the law that two students are on the board.
Gillies found that important decisions at Dundee were made outside formal governance structures, with a “small inner circle” controlling key outcomes. Our survey question on decision-making transparency suggests this is far from unique.
When asked whether “important decisions are made by a small inner circle before reaching the governing body,” 51 per cent said this happened “a lot”, with another 44 per cent saying “a little”.
The comments reveal how that manifests. One student governor described discovering a shadow governance structure:
I think there’s a huge element of culture at my institution which prevents effective governance but it’s also the structure. There’s a meeting which isn’t included in the governance structure but everything goes to it before it can go anywhere else and it’s restricted to senior managers at the university. If it isn’t approved there, it won’t happen, even if things like rent negotiations have taken place in the ‘proper’ meetings, they can just scrap it and say ‘no, this is what needs to happen’ and then we’re just told. It feels like secret meeting which secretly governs everything and every other meeting is a rubber stamp for decisions made there.
Another put it more bluntly:
The meetings are very odd places, we don’t have any input at all on anything. Everything that comes to the Court is finished, and our job seems to be to politely probe what is in front of us (always once, follow ups frowned upon). Eye-opening but completely pointless.
Gillies highlighted how late papers and missing documentation hampered effective governance at Dundee – the control of information emerges as a critical tool in maintaining this system across the sector. Over half (54 per cent) of respondents in our survey reported experiencing late papers, missing documentation, or “critical updates given verbally rather than in writing” frequently.
But it goes deeper than administrative incompetence. When asked about financial information quality – an area Gillies found particularly problematic at Dundee – 37 per cent said they’d frequently received reports that “were unclear, seemed to obscure the true position, contained unexplained anomalies, or lacked integrated information.”
One respondent shared a particularly telling anecdote:
Training – our old CFO was a dick. He said that he wouldn’t train student members of Council in the finances because we ‘wouldn’t understand it’ which, in my mind, seems like something to a) find out and b) entirely irrelevant to a governor asking to see financial information.
The systematic exclusion of student perspectives from board papers then compounds it:
Many of the budget requests and department updates did not reflect the student experience accurately whether it was missing data from specific feedback routes or lacking in student perspective entirely, it made approvals difficult for me and difficult for the board as I would then be asked for the data and even though I can share some of the issues I know of I cannot represent the entire student body. With only 48hrs notice.
The message seems to be that knowledge is power – and student governors aren’t meant to have it.
Gillies found that Dundee’s governing body had been presented with “overly positive pictures” that obscured institutional reality. Quite striking in our survey is the disconnect between the institution presented in governance meetings and the one students actually experience.
Multiple respondents described sitting through presentations that bore no resemblance to reality:
The university that gets presented isn’t the university I was at as a student.
Another elaborated:
It feels a lot like a fantasy world in there but they really don’t know how the university actually works, and the questions they ask are so weird, like they are desperate for the university to be as good as they imagine it is when there are really a lot of problems with how it runs especially at school level.
This fantasy is then maintained through what we might call the tyranny of positivity. When asked whether they’d felt “pressure to maintain positive messaging even when you have legitimate worries,” 61 per cent said they’d experienced this “a lot”.
The enforcement mechanisms vary. Some are explicit:
They love talking about ‘student voice’ in the abstract but hate it when we actually speak. I raised concerns about library hours during exams and the DVC literally rolled his eyes. Later the Chair pulled me aside and said I should ‘pick my battles more carefully’ and focus on ‘strategic matters’.
Others are more subtle. Multiple respondents described being praised for contributions that never led to change:
I was often praised in the minutes. ‘Thoughtful contribution from the student member.’ But praise without change feels hollow – a polite pat on the head.
This disconnect between fantasy and reality is exacerbated by what several respondents identified as an unhealthy fixation on rankings:
A lot of the meetings were really interested in what I had to say, but the obsession with league tables is bizarre. We spent easily an hour at the last meeting discussing how to game NSS metrics but when I suggested actually fixing the issues students raise – timetabling chaos, inconsistent feedback, broken IT systems – I got blank stares. One governor literally said ‘can’t we just manage student expectations better?’ What’s the point?
Another observed:
There are about sixteen of us in theory but really there are six people who speak at every meeting, and it is always about whether we are beating other universities. I don’t think the governors have any way to judge how well the university is doing other than by thinking about other universities. It is very weird.
This comparative obsession substitutes for genuine evaluation of institutional health – where things become filtered through the lens of institutional positioning rather than student experience.
The survey responses also reveal how regulatory compliance has become another distorting filter. Several respondents noted how the Office for Students has inadvertently created perverse incentives:
It is very weird to me that whenever I’ve talked about student issues they are responded to with things like ‘that would not be an issue for the OfS’, like we are only supposed to worry about the student experience if OfS are doing a visit.
It suggests that governing bodies are more concerned with regulatory perception than addressing underlying problems – a dangerous conflation of compliance with quality.
A particularly Byzantine aspect of student perceptions of governance emerges in the contradictions around representation. Multiple respondents noted being told explicitly that they were “not a representative” of students, only to have governors constantly ask them about student views:
At the start of the year it is drilled into you that you are not a representative, and then at every meeting someone has asked me what students think, what students are saying, how students would react, and so on. It really is ridiculous.
It creates an impossible position – student governors are simultaneously expected to embody the student voice whilst being forbidden from claiming to represent it, and are consulted when convenient but dismissed when challenging.
The tokenism extends to how “the student experience” is conceptualised:
There is a pressure not to rock the boat too much or the SU funding will be under threat. One other thing is that the other governors see ‘the student experience’ as one homogeneous thing. I represent 30,000 students – disabled students, commuters, mature students, international students, care leavers – but I get 5 minutes at the end of every meeting to cover ‘student matters.’ When I highlight different needs across student groups, eyes glaze over.
One response powerfully captured another dimension of the problem:
Too many decisions are made by white upper-middle class men who have no real understanding of student demographics or experiences and the effects that rushed, ill informed decisions can have on the student body.
This homogeneity problem compounds all the others – if governance doesn’t reflect the communities it serves, how can it possibly understand their needs?
Throughout the responses runs a theme of performative partnership that masks fundamental power imbalances. Student governors describe being valued for their “input” on predetermined decisions whilst being told their contributions are “premature” on anything still under genuine consideration:
Two types of agenda items, ones where student input is ‘valued’ (anything they’ve already decided) and those where student input is ‘premature’ (anything they haven’t decided yet). Its never the right time for meaningful student contribution.
The contrast between public and private behaviour is also revealing:
I feel that the UET are like Jekyll and Hyde, they have listened to me outside of the meetings but when I have asked about things during Board meetings they react very defensively. I’m not supposed to be a rep for students but nobody else ever talks about students unless we count recruiting students.
Gillies found that committees at Dundee operated as “rubber stamping exercises” rather than providing genuine oversight. Our survey revealed similar patterns, with 46 per cent reporting committees feeling like “rubber stamping exercises.”
Even when committees try to assert themselves, the resistance is telling:
We had an issue with the auditors and the closest I’ve seen us come to blows as a Council was when the exec tried to treat the issue as annoying but closed and move on but Council had to say ‘actually, no, we’d like an audit of our auditors to work out how [confidential] was missed.’
The fundamental problem, as one respondent observed, may be structural:
I honestly think that the huge number of things the council are expected to know about and make decisions on are beyond them. They don’t meet often enough and they really do not understand their responsibilities.
Gillies documented how Dundee’s governance processes were abandoned during crisis periods. Our survey asked about governance during “difficult periods,” and of those who didn’t say “N/A”, 51 per cent reported seeing “normal governance processes abandoned, informal advisory groups bypass committee structures, or key oversight bodies become inactive when they’re most needed.”
It suggests that whatever thin veneer of good governance exists in normal times rapidly dissolves under pressure – precisely when robust governance is most essential:
Student input in governance is at a real risk of just becoming a box ticking exercise as I have sat in meetings where the student experience is discussed by everyone but the students in the room. Once decisions need to be made at speed all thought for student and staff is ignored and it is often because of their own burdensome governance structures that inhibit the agility needed for such a volatile time in HE.”
The emotional toll shouldn’t be underestimated. Multiple respondents described feeling “out of place,” “invalidated,” or like they were “betraying everyone” simply by asking questions.
One particularly poignant comment came from a sabbatical officer who left their role early:
It was a really tough experience as I had students relying on me. I wish that I could’ve stayed in my role for longer but the lack of transparency and wish to subdue the view for students contradicted my individual beliefs and leadership style. I was supportive and I wanted students to know what I was doing. This wasn’t always possible.
And the lack of institutional learning is telling:
It is telling that they spent so much time with me at the start but haven’t spent any time with me to get my feedback at the end. I feel that they should do exit interviews to learn about how intimidating the atmosphere can be.
Perhaps most damning is the response to our final question. When asked whether they “feel confident that your governing body would identify and respond appropriately to serious institutional risks,” only 32 per cent expressed confidence.
That means 68 per cent of student governors – governors who usually have the most intimate knowledge of how their institutions actually operate – doubt their governing body’s ability to spot and address serious problems.
One captured the fundamental dysfunction:
If I compare it to being on my union board I think the governors is a joke. If I ask why or how in the union we have a decent conversation. If I do it at governors the atmosphere is like I’ve betrayed everyone. And if I say something isn’t clear that is turned into something I’ve not done or read. We’re not governors. We’re an audience.
Another summed up the experience with clarity:
I feel that the whole thing is engineered to make the vice chancellor and her team to look good rather than gather our input or ideas, I would have side conversations with some of the community governors who shared my view but there just is not any part of any meeting where ‘input’ is welcome.
Some of the most problematic critiques came in respondents’ final reflections on what governance actually means in practice:
What frustrates me most is the wasted potential. These are genuinely smart, accomplished people who could transform this place. But they’re trapped in this weird bubble where everything’s fine and any criticism is disloyalty. I know I’m not the only one.
The sense of governance as performance came through repeatedly:
In the January meeting I was invited to do a presentation before the formal meeting on what student life is like and I got a lot of praise from the Chair about how eye-opening it was. But about half of the governors were not there and the PVC-E went off on one about how the university’s surveys contradicted some of the things we were saying. I feel that the whole body just doesn’t have a clue about students or staff and what it is like to be a student in 2025.
One respondent captured the Kafkaesque nature of their experience:
The whole ‘critical friend’ thing is such a con. We’re meant to be critical but every time I challenge something I get ‘well, Council can only advise, we cannot instruct the executive.’ So we’re legally responsible for decisions we can only ‘advise’ on? The Vice Chancellor keeps saying Council is ‘not a court’ whenever we try to hold them accountable. I’ve started asking ‘what CAN Council actually do?’ because honestly I’m not sure anymore.
The broader implications were spelled out starkly:
The big, big, BIG thing for us as student leaders has been ‘what Council is and is not for’. Often, when we’ve brought issues for discussion or ‘airing’ at Council, I have had every variation of ‘Council is not a court’ ‘Council can only advise the exec, it cannot instruct it’ ‘Council is for critical challenge but cannot dictate’ some of which is absolutely at odds with then being legally responsible for the decisions you have only ‘advised on’ and ‘cannot dictate’.
And perhaps most damningly:
As a new Sabbatical officer, I felt extremely out of place with the culture of Court meetings, as if I wasn’t supposed to be or welcome there. It made my input feel invalidated and overlooked. Structurally, important decisions are already decided upon within committees before reaching court.
It’s important to set what I’ve gathered in context. Student governors have a particular perspective and a specific set of confidence and cultural capital asymmetries that are bound to make being on a body of the “great and good” a difficult experience.
41 responses is not the whole sector (and may not even be from 41 universities), and it was a self-selecting survey. But we should be worried.
Out of the back of the Dundee episode, both Graeme Day and the Scottish Funding Council have committed to exploring ways to strengthen governance to avoid a repeat.
Universities Scotland has committed to collective reflection on Gilles’ findings and the lessons it shares to give “robust assurance” of financial management and good governance to funders, regulators, supporters and all who depend on universities.
It has also said it will “connect” to Universities UK’s work to consider the leadership and governance skills required in the sector in times of transformation and challenge.
As such, the same issue that students see in governing bodies is playing out nationally – there are questions that suggest a loss of autonomy, and reassurance about “performance” designed to retain it.
There is therefore a real danger that the processes will conclude what these sorts of things always conclude – that with the right “skills” and adherence to a given Code, all will be well.
But the experiences from students suggest that neither “getting the right skills” nor calls for better codes will solve the fundamental problems. The issue isn’t just about getting the “right” people around the table or training them better – it’s about reconsidering what we’re asking governance to do.
As I noted here and here, the Dutch experience offers an alternative. Following a series of governance scandals in the early 2000s, the Netherlands rejected both excessive state control and unfettered institutional autonomy. Their 2016 Education Governance Strengthening Act created a “third way” – creating multi-level democratic participation from program to institutional level.
Rather than imposing rigid rules, the framework promoted “horizontal dialogue” where students, staff, management, and supervisors engage in ongoing conversations about their university.
A 2021 evaluation found meaningful channels for student and staff input had been created, with improved dialogue quality between stakeholder groups. If there’s enough of them, staff and students have turned out to be better at scrutiny than skilled lay members or someone from the funding council sat in the corner.
It’s also partly about what is discussed. Most boards operate primarily in fiduciary mode (overseeing budgets, ensuring compliance) or strategic mode (setting priorities, deploying resources). While essential, these modes often crowd out what governance scholars call the “generative mode” – critical thinking, questioning assumptions, and framing problems in insightful ways.
Generative governance asks probing questions: “What is our fundamental purpose?” and “How does this decision align with our core values?” It involves scenario planning, delving into root causes rather than symptoms, and actively considering ethical implications beyond legal compliance. And it allows senior staff to participate, rather than perform – a culture that then improves scrutiny in fiduciary mode.
It is where staff, student, and community governors could add most value – yet it’s often where their contributions are most dismissed as inappropriate or “operational.” The standard line that governors should be “concerned with the university rather than as representatives” misses the point that understanding the lived experience of those working and studying there is essential to good governance, and actually improves fiduciary scrutiny.
Put another way, maybe better fiduciary mode scrutiny could have probed more on the Nigerian students focussed business plan at Dundee. But it’s more likely that better generative mode governance could have explained what was starting to happen to the currency in Nigeria, how tough students were funding it to pay their fees, and what families were going through as the Naira went into collapse.
It’s also partly about what we think “effectiveness” means. Universities facing unprecedented challenges – financial pressures, technological disruption, legitimacy crises – need governance capable of navigating complexity, not just ticking out risk registers. They need what the Dutch reforms sought – genuine accountability to the communities they serve, not just reassuring compliance with regulatory requirements.
Universities at their best are spaces where different forms of knowledge encounter each other, and where democratic values are modeled and sustained. Their governance should reflect this reality.
As such, we need to ensure we’re solving the right problem. The issue isn’t governors who need better training or institutions that need tighter control. It’s a governance model designed for a different era and different types of organisation, struggling to cope with contemporary complexity while excluding the voices that could help navigate it.
What we do next requires courage to move beyond the false choice between corporatisation and collegial nostalgia. A third way is possible – one that takes seriously both institutional sustainability and democratic participation, that values both expertise and lived experience, that reconciles the university interest with the interests of those who study and work there rather than separating them or elevating one of them, and that governs for the public good rather than just institutional survival.
The students sitting in those boardrooms, feeling like audiences rather than governors, deserve better. So do the staff, the communities universities serve, and democracy itself.
Key points:
As school districts continue to seek new ways to enhance learning outcomes, Madison County School District represents an outstanding case study of the next-level success that may be attained by centralizing IT governance and formalizing procedures.
When Isaac Goyette joined MCSD approximately seven years ago, he saw an opportunity to use his role as Coordinator of Information Technology to make a positive impact on the most important mission of any district: student learning. The district, located in northern Florida and serving approximately 2,700 students, had made strides towards achieving a 1:1 device ratio, but there was a need for centralized IT governance to fully realize its vision.
Goyette’s arrival is noted for marking the beginning of a new era, bringing innovation, uniformity, and central control to the district’s technology infrastructure. His team aimed to ensure that every school was using the same systems and processes, thereby advancing the students’ access to technology.
Every step of the way, Goyette counted on the support of district leadership, who recognized the need for optimizing IT governance. Major projects were funded through E-rate, grants, and COVID relief funds, enabling the district to replace outdated systems without burdening the general fund. MCSD’s principals and staff have embraced the IT team’s efforts to standardize technology across the district, leading to a successful implementation. Auto rostering and single sign-on have made processes easier for everyone, and the benefits of a cohesive, cross-department approach are now widely recognized.
To successfully support and enable centralization efforts, Goyette recognized the need to build a strong underlying infrastructure. One of the key milestones in MCSD’s technology journey was the complete overhaul of its network infrastructure. The existing network was unreliable and fragmented in design. Goyette and his team rebuilt the network from the ground up, addressing connectivity issues, upgrading equipment, and logically redoing district systems and processes, such as the district’s IP network addressing scheme. This transformation has had a positive impact on student learning and engagement. With reliable connectivity, students no longer face disruptions.
The implementation of an enterprise-grade managed WAN solution has further transformed the educational experience for MCSD’s students and educators, serving as the backbone for all other technologies. Goyette’s innovative co-management approach, coupled with his deep understanding of network topology, has enabled him to optimize the resources of an experienced K-12 service provider while retaining control and visibility over the district’s network.
New School Safety Resources
Another significant milestone MCSD has achieved is the successful deployment of the district’s voice system. This reliable phone system is crucial for ensuring that MCSD’s schools, staff, and parents remain seamlessly connected, enhancing communication and safety across the district.
Goyette’s innovative leadership extends to his strategies for integrating technology in the district. He and his team work closely with the district’s curriculum team to ensure that technology initiatives align with educational goals. By acting as facilitators for educational technology, his team prevents app sprawl and ensures that new tools are truly needed and effective.
“Having ongoing conversations with our principals and curriculum team regarding digital learning tools has been critical for us, ensuring we all remain aligned and on the same page,” said Goyette. “There are so many new apps available, and many of them are great. However, we must ask ourselves: If we already have two apps that accomplish the same goal or objective, why do we need a third? Asking those questions and fostering that interdepartmental dialogue ensures everyone has a voice, while preventing the headaches and consequences of everyone doing their own thing.”
MCSD’s IT transformation has had a profound impact on student learning and engagement. With reliable connectivity and ample bandwidth, students no longer face disruptions, and processes like single sign-on and auto account provisioning have streamlined their access to educational resources. The district’s centralization efforts have not only improved the educational experience for students and educators but have also positioned Madison County School District as a model of success and innovation.
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Higher education has reached its canary-in-a-coal-mine moment: The recent resignation of the University of Virginia president under intense political pressure isn’t just another leadership transition but an indicator of hazards ahead, with similar pressures mounting George Mason University. Higher education governing boards cannot ignore these urgent warning signs that signal peril for the governance structures that have supported our universities and colleges for centuries.
U.S. higher education is built on a unique model of governance in which independent citizen trustees exercise fiduciary oversight, set policy, safeguard institutional autonomy, support fulfillment of the mission and act in the best interests of the university or college as stewards of the public trust. This model of self-governance has preserved the academic freedom and driven the innovation that are hallmarks of U.S. higher education and that form the foundation of the profound societal impact and global prominence of the sector.
Today, this governance model faces significant disruption. At both public and private institutions, trustees are being encouraged by policy-driven think tanks to serve as ideological agents and interfere with management rather than act as true fiduciaries. This violation of institutional autonomy is destabilizing and harmful to governance, yielding fractured boards, diminished presidential authority, politicized decision-making, academic censorship and loss of public trust.
Boards must take this warning very seriously and take a hard look at whether their decisions reflect independent judgment aligned with the institution’s mission or, instead, the influence of external agendas. If governance fails, academic freedom is compromised, academic quality is weakened, public trust is eroded and the promise of U.S. higher education and its role in a democracy will disappear.
To guide boards in upholding institutional autonomy and mission stewardship, the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges recently launched the Govern NOW initiative with support from a Mellon Foundation grant. As part of this initiative, AGB developed a models of governance comparison and checklist for governance integrity. These tools help board members distinguish between effective governance and ideologically driven overreach and provide a framework to assess their practices and recommit to their fiduciary responsibilities.
This is especially critical due to growing misinformation about the role of trustees. Without a true understanding of their responsibilities, they might act independently of board consensus, undermine governance norms, overstep management boundaries and pursue ideological agendas. These actions not only weaken governance by harming board cohesion and culture but also threaten the institutional stability and mission that trustees are charged to uphold.
This moment is not about partisan politics. It is about leadership and whether we will allow institutional governance to be hijacked by ideological conflict. At stake is the integrity of the governance system that has been the foundation on which the strength and distinction of U.S. higher education has been built.
To every trustee, I implore you to look inward. Ask whether your board is governing with independence and as stewards of mission and public trust. Use the tools AGB developed to evaluate your culture and boundaries. Engage in real dialogue with your president. Lead together with courage and clarity to secure higher education’s promise.