Good course rep systems support students to understand how democracy and representation can make a difference to their lives, but when unions get this wrong what suffers is student experience, student skills, and credibility with university and academic partners.
Many students and young people are apathetic about what representation systems can do for them, with polling from The Electoral Commission in 2026 reporting that for young people aged 11-25, ‘politics feels distant, confusing and unlikely to make a difference’. It’s not surprising given news headlines are populated with how opportunities for graduates appear to be shrinking.
Changing the perception that students are powerless to do anything about their daily issues is both the greatest opportunity and biggest threat which unions face today. Principles of community organising are proving to be attractive to many unions because students need to feel confident in their ability to campaign for change when they face injustices on a regular basis.
Unions can’t afford to get academic representation wrong. It’s a service which transforms the experience of their members, with more unions pivoting strategies to put student issues, campaigns and advocacy at the heart of their work.
Academic representation has a core place within this, but not in the way unions have traditionally delivered them.
We shouldn’t get rid of reps – but we need to serve them better
At Membership Services Conference in August, Rosie Hunnam from Organised Fun and my colleague Alan Roberts from Counterculture debated whether we should get rid of reps all together.
Course reps are still useful as a representative role. They provide a clear way to close the feedback loop for student groups and academic colleagues and provide democratic accountability, even if more unions are moving to selection and paid roles rather than election processes for these positions.
Moreover, there is still student appetite for these roles. I’ve yet to hear of a union who failed to recruit any course reps across their entire portfolio due to a lack of interest. These roles support students to develop their skills, employability, add to their CV and see the real behind-the-scenes action of how change takes place within their institution.
We shouldn’t devalue that experience, but there are several factors which need addressing to successfully transform academic representation. The experience must be good quality for the students and staff involved, empower people to help themselves, and demonstrate that unions fight for students on big and small issues.
Whilst course rep roles might have candidates applying, that doesn’t mean student experience is good quality once they begin these roles. In our consultancy work at Counterculture, we often hear from student groups and staff that these systems are ineffective, hard to administrate, and don’t tackle larger student complaints. It is a poor use of budget and capacity to be delivering services which functionally don’t work and aren’t pleasant to be a part of.
We cannot carry on resourcing ineffective academic representation
Many unions are managing a course rep system which is under resourced. Where resources are limited, our systems should pivot to more effectively supporting people to help themselves.
The resources of the union can go towards the biggest issues, whilst empowering the people and structures which underpins them to tackle smaller issues. However, decentralising support only works when student voice teams genuinely understand what students care about, what they want their union to do, and which issues will make a difference to their quality of life.
In practice, this means looking at the wider student engagement work which unions do. How can unions better educate all students about their academic rights, how to raise issues within the system, and boost their changemaking abilities whilst remaining in touch with student voice?
This work needs to be visible and SUs going out to bat for students is vital, particularly at a senior level when change stalls. Students are fed up with complaining about the same issues only to never see action.
This shows in the views from incoming sabbatical officers who are motivated to mobilise on big and small issues, with Sharanya and Jim reflecting from their recent officer visits across the country:
‘This year the question has changed, because the cohort has changed. The class of 2026 is not apathetic, and it is not just unambitious. It is precise about a promise that just doesn’t add up.’
When unions tell students (either directly or indirectly through how they use their resources) that these issues aren’t worth fighting for, it impacts both the students who are part of the system and those who will never take part because they don’t believe in it.
We need to make the promise add up for students if we want to grow participation in union representation systems, increase awareness of the union’s work and make course reps feel like they are part of a system which genuinely makes students’ lives better.
Students deserve more than broken systems
Unions are facing challenges recruiting reps, changes to teaching and learning such as course and module cuts, and systemic issues including rising academic misconduct cases. Students care deeply about these issues and want to see their union doing something about them.
In this climate, students’ unions have a tough job convincing members that their representation system can support them, but change is most transformative when we see it firsthand.
Strengthening the overall academic representation experience for students means having hard conversations about how unions spend their resources and the goals of their strategic work, whilst transforming academic representation requires unions to look at the role of all the pieces in this space.
It is within our power to change the experience of course reps for the better, but only if unions are willing to look at the bigger strategic picture rather than tweaking a system which is already broken.
