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.