Universities are among the most important communities in Britain. They bring together people who teach, learn, undertake research, maintain laboratories and libraries, support students, preserve knowledge and contribute to the towns and cities in which they are based. In some areas they are emerging as one of the largest local employers, as well as acting as a vital spring board for aspirational local people wanting to improve their lives.

Yet the people who make up these communities rarely have meaningful control over how their universities are run.

The Crisis of the Corporate University

Across Britain, universities are under severe pressure. Courses are closing, jobs are being lost and departments are being restructured, often leaving whole areas of the country without local access to higher education in core subjects. Relations between employees and senior management have deteriorated to an all-time low, while students increasingly feel that decisions affecting their education are made at a distance from them.

The usual response to this crisis is to call for stronger leadership, tighter management and further restructuring. But after decades in which authority has become increasingly concentrated in governing boards and senior executive teams, it is reasonable to ask whether more managerialism is really the answer. Indeed, perhaps it is part of the problem.

With that in mind, it seems timely to ask a more fundamental question about our universities that gets to the heart of what they are for. Even in the most corporate-minded university, the public face of the institution will invariably stress that it is a community dedicated to pursuing excellence for the good of society. But, if that is the case, then why are universities not governed co-operatively by the communities that create and sustain them?

Conversely, most British universities are run through a structure in which ultimate authority rests with a governing council or board of trustees. These bodies frequently contain a substantial number, and sometimes a majority, of external members. Academic senates and staff representative bodies may be consulted, but their authority is generally limited or delegated. Students may also have representation, but rarely possess meaningful constitutional power.

This means that the people with the greatest day-to-day knowledge of a university, those who teach in it, study in it and keep it functioning, can find themselves with little influence over its overall direction. But this is not the only possible model.

The Oxbridge Precedent

Oxford and Cambridge are not co-operatives in the legal sense, they possess important elements of democratic self-government akin to co-operativism.

At Oxford, Congregation brings together thousands of academics and other senior members of the University. It approves legislation, elects members of governing bodies and has the power to challenge important decisions. At Cambridge, the Regent House remains the University’s principal legislative and electoral body.

From the outside these structures might seem cumbersome, and they do not give every employee or student an equal voice, but the success of both Oxford and Cambridge demonstrates an important principle, that large, complicated and internationally successful universities can be governed as academic communities rather than managed as quasi-private corporations.

If significant internal democracy is compatible with institutional success at Oxford and Cambridge, why should a modern and more inclusive version not be possible elsewhere?

A co-operative university would not mean that every operational decision was taken by referendum. Nor would it mean abolishing professional management or rejecting external expertise. Universities would still need people with knowledge of finance, law, estates, regulation and organisational strategy. They would also need vice-chancellors and senior teams capable of making decisions and carrying them out. Consequently the question is not whether universities should be managed, any more than we would debate whether the John Lewis Partnership or a building society needs managers. The question is to whom those managers should be accountable.

A Blueprint for Co-operative Governance

Under a multi-stakeholder co-operative model, staff and students would become members of their university. They would elect a university assembly with genuine constitutional authority.

That assembly would:

• approve the institution’s overall strategy;
• elect or confirm members of the governing council;
• have a defined role in major decisions such as mergers, property sales, large-scale redundancies and departmental closures.

The vice-chancellor would continue to lead the institution, but their appointment would be subject to the approval of the university’s members or their elected assembly, much as happens currently at Oxford and Cambridge.

Similarly, external trustees would continue to provide independent scrutiny and specialist knowledge, but they would no longer exercise controlling power in the manner of a company board. Day-to-day management would remain delegated to professional executives. The difference would be that the authority is exercised on behalf of a membership rather than granted by a small and largely self-perpetuating board.

The criteria for membership would need to be carefully designed. It should include academic staff, professional services staff, technical and operational employees, and of course students. It should also ensure that fixed-term, casualised and lower-paid workers are not excluded from the democratic life of the institution, or part-time and adult education students who can already feel seriously marginalised. There may also be a place for alumni and representatives of local communities, including local councils, civic organisations and local businesses. Universities are major local employers, landowners and civic institutions and so a co-operative structure could help them become more firmly rooted in the places they serve.

Such a model would not solve every problem facing higher education. Co-operative governance cannot by itself replace lost funding, resolve recruitment pressures or remove the difficult choices universities sometimes have to make. But the current system has not protected universities from financial instability, repeated restructuring, deteriorating employment relations or declining institutional trust. It should not therefore be treated as the only serious or responsible form of governance. Indeed, we should seriously consider whether the current system is a failed system in need of radical change.

One of the most important aspects of a co-operative model is its ability to tap-in effectively to knowledge distributed throughout an institution. This is a profound blindspot in most current universities, where distributed knowledge is often inaccessible, unseen or even actively shunned by senior managers. Such knowledge and understanding could improve the quality of decision-making and make difficult decisions more legitimate by ensuring that those affected had a meaningful part in making them. It could also encourage a longer-term approach, reducing the temptation to pursue rapid expansion, contraction, expensive rebranding exercises or repeated restructures without sufficient support from the university community.

A Practical Route to Conversion

The route to the conversion of existing universities to a co-operative model need not be difficult. The governments across the United Kingdom could create legal, regulatory and financial routes through which willing universities might convert into multi-stakeholder co-operative structures.

This could begin with a working group bringing together the Co-operative Party, the wider co-operative movement, universities, trade unions, students, regulators and governance specialists. Its task would be to develop model constitutions, membership arrangements and guidance on how democratic control could operate alongside charitable status, trustee responsibilities and regulatory requirements.

Governments could then invite a small number of willing universities to pilot the model, with financial and legal support during the transition. This is not a suggestion that universities should be forced to convert. The purpose would be to make conversion possible and to allow institutions to demonstrate that a different kind of governance can work.

It would be naive to assume that those already holding power within universities will always be willing to surrender it. Governing boards and senior executives may argue that democratic control will make decision-making slower or less predictable. Those concerns should be taken seriously. But they should also be weighed against the failures and weaknesses of the present system. Concentrated authority does not guarantee sound judgement, financial stability or public confidence. Indeed, if the current state of Britain’s universities teaches us anything, it is that the corporate model is not working and it is logical to search for an alternative. Given the level of idealism still present even today in our universities, the possibility of a new democratic system of governance might even be welcomed by a number of university managements.

Universities often describe themselves as communities. It is time to consider giving that word constitutional meaning. No one is suggesting that Oxford and Cambridge are models to be copied wholesale. But they demonstrate that universities can function with substantial internal self-government while remaining complex and successful institutions.

In short, if a form of democratic university governance is considered suitable for Oxford and Cambridge, why should a modern co-operative version not also be suitable for Essex, Huddersfield or Coventry?