Course reps, module evaluation surveys, and other voice systems seem as cemented into university life as society and sports Wednesday afternoons, student elections, and the poster sales every October.
They’re only around 40 years old, and the last time we had a sector review of their work was over 15 years ago.
So much has changed around the student experience since then – tuition fees tripled, digital submission of assessments arrived, virtual learning environments (VLEs) became the norm, Covid-19 reshaped everything, and even how students communicate with each other looks completely different. So how has student voice changed?
This Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) funded Collaborative Enhancement Project came from my experience of running course rep reviews within SUs. I was working at the University of Nottingham SU leading student voice, and I decided to run a review of our reps system.
I’d run rep reviews at three other institutions before this, so I went through the same motions – use the TSEP benchmark from the early 2010s, scour SU websites for how their systems worked, and chat to colleagues at a few conferences.
When doing this, I saw many other managers and senior managers in SUs doing the exact same thing, which felt inefficient.
Why isn’t there an up-to-date resource? So our team decided to develop one, giving the sector a current snapshot to work from. What follows are some of the key findings from that project.
Is democracy dead?
The project had 78 institutions participating. The first questions people asked were around what levels of representation exist and how course reps are recruited. 69.23 per cent of respondents had more than one level of student representation – including programme level – and 53.85 per cent had an institutional-level representative body responsible for academic matters.
These were often councils or forums operated by the SU, and this represents a considerable expansion since the previous review of these systems. The ratio of course reps to students ranged between 1:20 and 1:50, which does suggest in theory a sweet spot for rep system size relative to institution size.
At course rep level, just over half are running elections – 54 per cent – with over a quarter running a self-selection system at 26 per cent, and 12 per cent running an application and selection system. That’s a big change compared to 15 years ago, when running elections was the norm. Of the institutions that still run course rep elections, 94 per cent are running them online, with only seven per cent holding them in person.
For higher-level representatives, recruitment has shifted even further – 48 per cent now use an application and selection system, 35 per cent run elections, and only four per cent use a self-nomination process. Why are we seeing this shift away from traditional democratic systems within a sector that prides itself on being democratic and student-led?
To pay or not?
The assumed answer for why we’re seeing a shift away from election systems is the Education Act 1994. Within this Act, Clause 22.2.F states:
A person should not hold sabbatical union office, or paid elected union office, for more than two years in total at the establishment.”
The term “paid elected union office” means that the only way you could pay course or faculty reps would be if they weren’t elected and were recruited through application or self-selection.
What the data shows is that the majority of course reps – 84.61 per cent – and the majority of higher-level representatives – 57.69 per cent – are voluntary with no payment.
That’s a big change for higher-level representatives from 15 years ago, but it suggests the move away from elections isn’t solely about payment. The research also reveals a wide range of non-financial incentives being used across the sector.
What works
We also wanted to explore the good practice happening across the sector, and share it on platforms outside the typical SU and student engagement professionals’ space. We wanted to make sure that everyone, no matter their institution, could take something practical away from each case study – which is why we included a “lessons learned” section within each one. A few examples from the report stand out.
Around reward and recognition, Sheffield Hallam SU has developed a badge system where student reps can record and be rewarded for their work. This approach has been easier to scale and better engages students compared to tiered systems, as students can focus on the skills and knowledge they want to develop without being locked out of rewards due to their personal time commitment.
Around reps structure, the University of Manchester SU has given more agency and freedom to their higher-level representatives rather than just serving as an escalation function. As they’ve been able to focus on developing projects that matter to them and their reps, there’s been a real focus on community building within the reps system that has helped the wider system grow and strengthen.
Around effective resourcing, the University of Westminster SU has moved away from one coordinator responsible for all 900 reps to having three more locally focused roles that have been able to provide specific support at that local level. They state that:
Academic representation thrives when it is strategically aligned, adequately resourced, and socially engaging, with strong institutional support.”
We hope that you can get the most out of this report, from its data to its case studies. It’s important to understand that this is a snapshot of what’s currently happening, and that we should use it as a springboard to review our own systems and try new things for the future.
Institutions, SUs, students, and our rep systems have all changed considerably over the past 15 years, and we’d expect them to change further within the next ten years when the modern course rep system hits its 50th birthday. Or will it change to such a degree that it’ll be unrecognisable from what it was when we look back?
Student voice in the University of Nottingham’s School of Education dept. is performative, and academics reeatedly （the same thing happened to another student who I do not want to name) use complaints pricedures to silence diasatisfied students rather than addressing their concerns and improving procedures to prevent similar things happening again. The formal complaints I submitted in the 2020/21 and 2023/24 acadmic years （unfairly dismissed by the OIAHE last year) show this.
The University also ignored a letter from Clive Betts MP about the way these complaints were handled. Again this shows the university does not really listen to students or to people attempting to represent them.
Hi Kerrie, could you explain why you deem the OIA response (which I guess gave a ‘not justified’ outcome) to be unfair? If the OIA did not uphold your complaint, then it means it is agreeing that the university followed its own policies and procedures but maybe I misunderstood what you tried to say.