Academic societies of the future: where socials, employability and representation collide
We have a strange divide in students’ unions where the Representation People and the Opportunities People are different tribes. Coming from an Opportunities background I left ‘the policy stuff’ and academic boards to those that knew what WIDAR* stood for. Instead sticking with the comfortable home of volunteering, societies and opportunities, of room bookings, risk assessments and committee conferences.
What I didn’t realise is that I’d already been part of the representation bit as a student. As President of the History Society I’d been told ‘it would be easier’ if I became a Course Rep, too. ‘You’re already talking to your course mates, you already know what’s going on’, I was advised by my course leader.
Fast forward a million years (okay, more like 11) and this is something I can’t stop thinking about. I’ve been chatting to people about this idea, suggesting it to a few SUs and learning about how others have already started doing it. In a conversation with Alan Roberts about this, he started telling me that the UK may be able to learn a think or two about this from other countries. I asked him to explain more…
We don’t need a course rep system. Academic societies should be formally constituted and not left to chance. That’s what I would like to pose.
I want us to imagine a model where each major subject must have an academic society, grouped by faculty, in faculty unions. At least part of the structure of the academic society is regulated by the students’ union and the institution, as the society now plays a fundamental role in both the informal and formal aspects of the student experience and student voice agendas of your institution.
So, let’s play a thought experiment, a projection designed to spark creativity. Let’s pose a What If:
At your institution, academic societies exist:
To provide the backbone of the cultural and social interests of a school, through a programme of extra-curricular and co-curricular activities and events
To advocate for the interests of students on the programme, both in their wellbeing, and academic affairs.
Notwithstanding whether you like this or not, what would this mean? What activities do you think would take place? Who would deliver them? How would democracy work and what would the support and development of these students and activities look like?
This is not a hypothetical scenario. This is how representation happens in many countries outside of the UK system. It’s delivered in several different ways, from the systems that treat it as if there are multiple students’ unions within one university, to systems of delegated representation through to a central union.
What they have in common, though, is the idea that the academic interests of students are linked to their role in the community of a school. In these student organisations, academics play active roles as relates particularly to co-curricular; permanent staff of the students’ union or association - where they exist - hold less administrative roles, but roles more reminiscent of a youth worker (in terms of creating student development initiatives) combined with a policy officer and advisor (to support competencies around advocacy and issues specialisms).
If, tomorrow, your institution moved to this model, how would you get there? Student opportunities staff would likely have to train up on student voice theory, rep coordinators on student development and community building. Academics would be caused to focus much more heavily on co-curricular activity. Societies would have to find ways of choosing reps within programmes – are elections really necessary, or are we talking about blossoming volunteer opportunities in academia? The central students’ union would probably have to work more like a collegiate union. What might this mean for SU campaign activities?
Try to answer as many of these questions (and more, no doubt) as possible…and see if you come up with some new ways of working!
*for everyone who hasn’t heard of WIDAR yet (don’t worry, that was me until about two years into working for NUS) it’s Workers In Democracy & Representation