One of the things I’ve long been fascinated by when we’ve been on our European study tours is what students’ unions are called.
I don’t mean whether they put the university name at the start or the end, or whether they use the abbreviation. I mean what they use to describe the body – and what signals that sends to students and others interacting with it.
In the UK, there’s three words – students’ union is the most common, and then there’s the association tradition in Scotland, and in a few cases in England, guild. And of course there’s the JCRs (Junior Common Rooms) and MCRs at Oxford and Cambridge.
All of those count as students unions as per the Education Act 1994 (as do some, but not all, of the colleges at Durham) – but there’s a range of other options in use across and beyond the EU.
In the Baltic states, Estonia employs the term “Üliõpilasesindus” (student representation or council), while Latvia uses “Studentu pašpārvalde” (student self-government). Lithuanian students organize under “Studentų atstovybė” (student representation or council).
These terms emphasize representation rather than union or association, perhaps reflecting their post-Soviet transition. Finland stands out with its “Ylioppilaskunta” (student body or corporation) at universities and “Opiskelijakunta” (student body) at universities of applied sciences.
The Scandinavian countries favor terms like “Studentparlament” (student parliament) in Norway and “Studenterråd” (student council) in Denmark, creating a governance-focused image that suggests representation rights.
In Central Europe, Austria’s legally mandated “Hochschülerinnen- und Hochschülerschaft” (higher education student body) operates through university-level “Universitätsvertretung” (university representation) bodies. Germany’s “Allgemeiner Studierendenausschuss” (General Students’ Committee) works alongside “Studierendenparlament” (Student Parliament) structures, both funded through student fees.
Switzerland uses more localized terms like “Studierendenrat” (student council) or “Fachschaft” (student association for a specific department), with structures varying by canton. The regionalization of terminology mirrors the federalized nature of these countries, resulting in student organisations that enjoy significant autonomy while maintaining strong institutional recognition.
The Mediterranean and Balkan countries mix it up too. Italy’s “Consiglio degli Studenti” (Student Council) and Spain’s “Consejo de Estudiantes” (Student Council) differ from Portugal’s “Associação de Estudantes” (Student Association), and Greece uses “Φοιτητικός Σύλλογος” (Student Association), typically organized by department rather than university-wide.
Then moving east, countries like Croatia use “Studentski zbor” (Student Assembly), while Hungary has “Hallgatói Önkormányzat” (Student Self-Government), reflecting the post-communist trend toward student autonomy within formalized structures.
So what boring nerd man
So what? It partly reveals fundamental differences in how student representation is conceptualized across Europe. The “parliament” and “self-government” models prevalent in Eastern Europe suggest democratic aspirations and formal autonomy, while Northern European “associations” and “bodies” tend to combine service provision with representation rights.
The linguistic choices reflect deeper cultural, historical, and governance contexts that shape how students engage with university governance, and how others engage with the SU, and how others engage with the SU. They send signals – if something is called “the student council”, you instantly think of a broad representative body rather than its executive or its functional portfolio.
Of course they also reflect the law – most countries describe SUs and minimum standards for structures in their HE legislation – but as such they also reflect a degree of permanence.
If I think of the pattern of failed democracy reviews in SUs, what usually happens is that someone somewhere decides that the reason that a set of formal positions remains unfilled is that the design of those positions is at fault.
That’s usually signalled via a failure in participation – the deep tradition assumption in UK SUs is that if there’s a position it has to be elected, and so if few or no students stand for election, the position needs to be abolished, deleted, paid or whatever. We just expect every position in the by-laws to be contested for some reason.
Of course the problem with democratic participation in general, and leadership positions inside democracies specifically, is that they are often hard work, involve conflict and process, and a degree of commitment and time that seems to be in shorter supply than in the past.
So the tendency is to reduce a dependence on it – only for, eventually, that reduced participation to go on to be criticised from a legitimacy perspective.
When a university sets up one of those “Fibchester 100” panels behind the SU’s back, it’s implicitly saying “because we don’t trust the SU to be broadly representative”. And in many cases, it has a point – especially if the main way to participate is through sabb elections, and the result ends up dominated by a type of student.
What’s fascinating, therefore about the “Student Council” name in use in some countries is that it becomes much less prone to constant reviews and reform. In those systems the council’s structure is usually much more rigid and set in stone than the leadership positions elected from it – a switch from the UK.
The question is what is done to keep those bodies going when back in the UK, it feels like the reverse if often true. And there’s broadly three answers to that question.
Tap on the shoulder
The first is that many of the council bodies are built upon delegate models from structures at school or faculty level. In many systems it’s not that someone stands to get on the council – it’s that every part of the university, with its own association, chapter or substructure, has a duty to send people to the main body. The “recruitment” is being done locally.
That suggests that SUs need to focus on building communities at school, faculty or department level that are capable of supplying delegates – something we’ve discussed before on the site.
The second is that “recruitment” is actually a thing. If we were to abolish lay trustees every time we struggled to recruit one, we’d find ourselves on the wrong side of a letter from the Charity Commission. Because the council is the key “thing”, the kneejerk is to improve search, shoulder tapping and talent identification rather than blaming the position and getting a consultant in to do a democracy review.
That suggests that SUs need to focus on recruitment – identifying talent, drawing in volunteers, asking others to nominate talent and so on – in the way that many now already do at sabb level, only much “lower down”.
And the third is much more flexibility about when appointment v when election is carried out. If I was trying to get someone onto sustainability committee in Finland, I’d advertise the post on the student rep recruitment portal like it’s a job, and then the sub committee of the council would interview the applicants.
In the UK I’d either be expected to plonk an already overworked sabb on it (only to have the chair moan about a lack of interest), or maybe create a part-time officer position that nobody will stand for because elections are so intiomidating, or not go at all, or send a staff member.
In the UK “democratic appointment” sounds oxymoronic – in many countries, it’s both a sensible and successful approach.
Debenhams is dead you know
But more broadly, what strikes me about the differences is that the UK may be missing a trick in trying to fit square pegs into round holes.
Over in Ireland, the legal, autonomous umbrella body at Dublin City University is called “DCU Student Life”, which in turn is made up of DCU Students Union, Club Life (for sport) and Society Life (that’s right, for societies).
The Office of Student Life’s mission is to enhance and support students’ DCU experience – both inside and outside the classroom – providing “opportunities for growth and development” through “holistic experiences”. Each year a percentage of students’ registration fee is put into one big pot called “capitation”, and that money is then given to DCU Student Life to fund clubs, societies and the SU.
As a resul, in many ways there’s three SUs for the price of one, each with its own leadership team, and it enables the SU itself to focus in on student voice and campaigns. Its governance is interesting too – the Board’s membership is made up of the SU President and one other sabb, the immediate past SU President, the Director of the Office of Student Life (like the CEO), the Director of DCU’s Student Support and Development, and DCU’s Head of Financial Planning.
That’s a key way in which a strong partnership is maintained while the SU itself remains fiercely independent and autonomous, and allows for differentiated governance for student representation and student experience matters. There’s much more about DCU in this article here.
If we think of UK SUs as large, multi-faceted bodies – department stores that encompass very different functions, pruposes, patterns or participatrion and so on, the idea that every SU still maintains a sort of department store model for its brand and most of its governance – rather than sub or even seperate brands and governance for things as diverse as a disco, a debate, crisis advice and skills development, is part of the reason why so many argue that the “thing” they think the SU is “for” turns out not to be what it is in fact for.
If it’s the case that – for free – a student gets to join a representative body fighting for their rights, a service that can offer individual advocacy and support, a body that enables them to get activities going and a service that gives them space and facilities where they can spend time with eachother, centralising both the brand and the day to day governance of those functions is utterly senseless.
There’s a reason why Debenhams is dead (or, at least in Bristol, now full of boys rolling their own and drinking illegally strong cider)
And just as we wouldn’t call every club and society by the same name, the idea we have the same basic brand and governance for a cafe bar, advice centre, rep council and sports event organiser is about as daft as it gets.
That’s not to suggest that SUs ought to be broken up. But it is to suggest that the more slick a union’s brand and governance gets, the harder it is for a student without confidence, social capital or time to imagine that they could play a role in running it. And if we give up on involving them and only consult them and research them like lab rats, we’re not really democratic any more are we?
