The Changing Nature of Student Leadership: findings from a national study

1. The Changing Nature of Student Leadership: findings from a national study Rachel Brooks, Kate Byford &Katherine Sela

2. Background • Relatively little academic research on students’ unions in UK • Paper draws on project funded by NUS and Leadership Foundation for Higher Education • 1st October 2012-31st December 2013 • Arguments situated within two bodies of literature: • ‘Voice’ and influence among students and young people • Theorisation of student representation

3. ‘Voice’ and influence • Critique of policy initiatives to give ‘voice’ to young people, e.g. • In schools, pupils have liminal status as political beings (Wood, 2012); youth councils as means of ‘taming’ youth dissent (Taft and Gordon, 2013) • ‘Domestication’ of the student voice (Morley, 2003) • Students’ unions play role in facilitating political engagement (Crossley and Ibrahim, 2012)

4. Theorising representation • Conceptualised as a pyramid (Rodgers et al., 2011) • Changing patterns from 1960s onwards • Typology developed by Luescher-Mamashela (2013) • Politically-realist case • Consumerist case • Communitarian case • Democratic case

5. Research methods • Online survey of students’ unions officers (N=176) • Focus groups at ten case study institutions (88 people in total) • One focus group with students’ union officers • One focus group with senior university managers • Four role-specific focus with officers from across England: • President, Education, Welfare & Activities

6. Key findings • Centrality of the representative function of students’ unions • Increasing importance of non-elected members • Changing relationships with senior management

7. Centrality of representative function • Role most commonly carried out by students’ unions • Role that greatest number of respondents thought was most important • Most important aspect of individual roles • E.g. 40 of 62 survey respondents • Corresponding decline in ‘activist’ role

8. Centrality of representative function • Explained largely with reference to external pressures • Concern, on part of some, that starting to limit students’ union: I think what we’re probably articulating is a pattern where the student union influence [on the HEI] …. has just eroded and eroded and eroded and is being distilled down to this kind of pivotal role around representation and so on [agreement] and that just leads to all the questions around, you know, what’s it there for, what’s it doing and that kind of thing and so on. (Senior managers, HEI 3)

9. Increasing importance of non-elected members • Shift of power towards permanent staff • Aim of developing more strategic vision and coherent agenda • But some disadvantages articulated: I know that some [elected] officers have found it difficult challenging the [students’ union] senior leadership team, who have naturally all come from leadership roles and are leaders themselves, to say actually, ‘This is the representational voice of students….and this is the direction we’d like to go with please’. (Senior managers, HEI 8)

10. Relationships with senior management • New willingness to engage in constructive ways • Explained with reference to changes in external environment (e.g. fees, NSS) • Senior managers placing more emphasis on ‘student voice’ • Union officers subject to similar measures of performance • Shared concern about ‘reputational damage’

11. Relationships with senior management • Locus of power? • Over half survey respondents thought had ‘some influence’ over decisions of senior managers • But, ultimately, power lay elsewhere • Decisions made outside meetings • Dependency reinforced by funding mechanisms • Initiatives could be blocked by other power bases in institution

12. Relationships with senior management • Some resentment at being ‘used’ to bring about change [It’s] really poor management when… the middle management have to you know maybe introduce an unpopular decision with the academic workforce and they will say, oh the union are making us do that…well no, it’s your senior management team who have adopted that policy…So sometimes the officers are viewed with a distrust or a hostility even from the academics; it’s probably unnecessary. (Students’ union focus group, HEI 1)

13. Discussion – student voice & influence • Some support for ‘domestication of student voice’ • Foregrounding of day-to-day issues • Fewer spaces for radical challenge to local or national policy • Little evidence to support Crossley and Ibrahim’s thesis re students’ unions facilitating political engagement • ‘Voice’ articulated mainly in relation to ‘student experience’ • Limits to influence

14. Discussion – theorising representation • Little evidence to support democratic or communitarian case • Data support both politically-realist and consumerist cases • Luescher-Manashela’s (2013) typology predicated on notion that interests of unions and senior managers are different • Data indicates very similar pressures on both

15. Conclusion • Three ways in which students’ unions have changed • Many positive results, but…. • Ostensibly closer relationship belies inequalities in power • Sector-wide pressures limiting capacity of students’ unions to take up more critical positions • Emphasis on student representation not necessarily in tension with managerialist imperatives