‘Cliquey’ governing bodies rely on ‘corporate boardroom ideology’

University governing bodies are often “cliquish” and “intimidating”, with “business realists” dominating and chairs “a bit too matey with senior management”, creating a “corporate boardroom ideology” disconnected from academics and students, according to a report based on interviews with members.

The report for the Council for the Defence of British Universities, University Governance: views from the inside, by Steven Jones and Diane Harris of the University of Manchester’s Manchester Institute of Education, is based on interviews with 47 current and former members of English university governing bodies who responded to a “general call on social media”.

It identifies “serious shortcomings” in university governance, with some governing bodies “reported to be stratified, cliquish and even intimidating”.

Professor Jones, who is professor of higher education at Manchester, said the aim of the report was to “find out what governance is really like: who gets to do it; how things are talked about; what the relationship is like between the senior managers and the ordinary board members”.

“The key finding for me is that many governors have a deep personal commitment to the role but find themselves feeling frustrated because their ideas aren’t acted upon,” he said.

Recent years have seen some high-profile university governance scandals, such as at De Montfort University, where the 2019 exit of former vice-chancellor Dominic Shellard triggered an Office for Students investigation finding “significant and systemic” governance failings, with the university accepting that its governing body “did not provide sufficient and robust oversight of the university’s leadership, in particular the vice-chancellor”.

The CDBU report highlights in English university governance “hierarchies within board membership and lack of transparency about process”.

“Interviewees reported that governors with favoured demographic profiles relating to age, gender, ethnicity and socioeconomic status tended to dominate discussions, and that some chairs (both of the main board/council and of its subcommittees) were ‘probably a bit too matey with senior management’,” the report continues.

“For student governors and female members in particular, the atmosphere was said to be daunting at times: ‘I always felt like I had to make allies because I was young, because I was a woman, because I was the only student governor.’”

Though some governors were “keen to reenergise debates about higher education as a public good, to advocate more explicitly on behalf of staff and students”, interviews suggested “a small cadre of ‘business realists’ with close links to management often controlled discussions and normalised market-based approaches”, the report says.

And a “growing focus on financial matters means that governors tend to be recruited disproportionately from narrower backgrounds”, it adds, and discussions “continue to be dominated by retired white men, mostly from a business background”, which “tends to reproduce an ideology that mirrors that of a corporate boardroom and can lead to a counter-productive separation of the governing body from campus communities”.

Professor Jones said the resources available to universities in their governors “are staggering: you have lay members that bring experience and skills from other sectors, sitting alongside staff governors with access to cutting-edge research and student governors who know what it’s like to be in the HE system right now.

“The challenge is to carry on with the regulatory and legal compliance, but also to see the university as something more than a corporate entity. Ideally, governing bodies would form a protective shield around their campus while working with each other to secure a stronger future for the whole sector.”

john.morgan@timeshighereducation.com