The Changing Conceptions of Student Participation in HE Governance in the EHEA

Abstract

Student participation in HE governance is considered one of the foundational values in European HE. It can be traced back to the medieval universities and it resurged with the student revolts in 1960s.Today, students as a collective body are in some way represented in HE governance in basically every European country. Accordingly we can find advanced – but also highly diversified – multilevel systems of student representation. The issue of student participation in HE governance has featured prominently in policy making within the Bologna Process. The European Ministers referred to student participation in affirmative terms in every Communiqué after the Prague Ministerial Summit in 2001. European Students’ Union [ESU], the representative platform of the European national unions of students, was granted a consultative membership and has participated in the governing structures of the Process. Yet, despite this high political involvement, ESU continues to report deteriorating student influence when it comes to institutional governance. This raises questions about the interactions and interrelations between student participation as a concept and social phenomenon and EHEA policy developments. The chapter addresses the ideational and normative foundations regarding student participation emerging from the two – intertwined – policy developments: the Bologna Process and the ‘modernisation agenda for universities’. In view of these developments, it investigates changes in the conception of student participation as depicted in the four main relationship constellations involving students: between the state and students, between university and students, between the academics and students, and between student representatives and students.

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1 Introduction

Student participation in HE governance is considered one of the foundational values in European HE. Different models of student participation can be traced back to medieval universities. In the Bologna University students were organised in a federation of student guilds and were in control of the organisation – not curriculum – of their studies and ‘supervised’ the professors to the extent that professors needed to make a financial deposit from which fines could be deducted if professors defected on certain agreed aspects of teaching or left town without permission (Haskins 1923: 1–36). A different model of student involvement evolved in Paris where the guild of professors – the masters – shared control over university with a student rector – a young master – elected by the students (ibid.). Student participation in governance resurges again prominently in 1960s and 1970s as part of student revolts resulting in significant governance reforms encompassing also new provisions on student participation. Perhaps the most significant changes were achieved in Germany with Gruppenuniversitäten emerging depicting a tripartite model of governance with the professoriate, non-professorial academics, and students represented in equal numbers in most institutional decision making bodies (de Boer and Stensaker 2007). Other countries in continental Europe also reformed their HE legislation towards a democratic governance model, which stipulates that universities as public institutions ought to be governed democratically, and that this implies the participation of all politically significant constituencies, including – and especially – students. Consequently, students as a collective body are in some way represented in the HE governance in basically every European country (Bergan 2004; Persson 2004). Accordingly we can find advanced – but also highly diversified – systems of student representation.

The issue of student participation in HE governance has featured prominently in policy making within the Bologna Process. The European Ministers referred to student participation in affirmative terms in every Communiqué after the Prague Ministerial Summit in 2001. European Students’ Union [ESU], the representative platform of the European national unions of students, was granted a consultative membership and has participated in the governing structures of the Process. Yet, despite this intense political involvement on the European level, ESU continues to report deteriorating student influence when it comes to institutional governance (ESU 2009, 2011a, b). This raises questions about the interactions and interrelations between student participation as a concept and social phenomenon and EHEA policy developments.

The chapter addresses the ideational and normative foundations of student participation emerging from the two – intertwined – policy developments: the Bologna Process and the ‘modernisation agenda for universities’. The factors influencing the governments’ and institutional choices regarding HE policy and strategy are no longer bound to the national context. Prior to the Bologna Process the national HE policies were formulated using international cross-country comparisons as a tool for reflection (Huisman et al. 2001). After the initiation of the Bologna Process, a new forum evolved providing a space for various policy issues to emerge, develop and possibly diffuse into the national and institutional levels (Kehm et al. 2009). Indeed, the Bologna Process transformed HE policy making ‘from an almost exclusively national affair with some international influences to one where national policy is systematically considered within a Europe-wide framework’ (Westerheijden et al. 2010: 38). During the same time, the adoption of the Education and Training 2010 Programme (Council 2001), which was linked to the Lisbon Agenda, created enabling conditions for deeper HE policy making within the European Union. HE became to be seen as one of the key drivers of the economic competitiveness stipulated by the Lisbon Agenda, and the policy recommendations called for HE reforms to serve this role better. A series of influential policy documents followed referred to collectively as the ‘modernisation agenda for European HE’ (EC 2003, 2005, 2006, 2008a, b). Both, policy developments have become closely intertwined. In fact, scholarly work suggests that Bologna initiatives had been ‘re-addressed in the light of the Lisbon Agenda’ (Capano and Piattoni 2011: 586; Keeling 2006).

In view of these policy developments, this chapter poses the question as to what conceptual and normative foundations regarding student participation emerge from the Bologna recommendations and the modernisation agenda for universities. The investigation focuses on the changes to the four main relationship constellations involving students: between the state and students, between university and students, between the academics and students, and between student representatives and students. The chapter suggests that the analysis of these interdependent relationships can give us a more comprehensive explanation of the changes in the conception of student participation in the development within the EHEA.

In the following sections, this chapter first (Sect. 34.2) develops and analytical approach to investigation of student participation in the EHEA. The analytical approach takes into account the diverse domains, the varying degrees and the multilevel character of student participation. The following section (Sect. 34.3) focuses on the ideational and normative foundation regarding student participation as constructed within the policy space of the EHEA. Concretely, the chapter reviews how student participation has featured within the Bologna Ministerial Communiqués and who the key protagonists of these ideas were. The next section (Sect. 34.4) describes the changes in European HE systems stemming from the European Union’s ‘modernisation agenda for universities’. The subsections depict the implications of this policy development on the four relationship constellations involving students: (Sect. 34.4.1) state/students – (Sect. 34.4.2) university/students – (Sect. 34.4.3) professoriate/students – (Sect. 34.4.4) representative student organisations/students. The concluding section analyses how these evolving relationships interact and impact on the changing notions of student participation in HE governance.

2 Analytical Approach to Investigation of Student Participation in the EHEA

Within the EHEA policy discourse (as well as in the majority of scholarly literature), student participation has tended to be addressed as a simple, undifferentiated phenomenon referring to student influence in the institutional governance. This chapter proposes a more comprehensive analytical approach to the investigation of student participation. It adopts the basic – common-sense – definition of student participation as students’ formal and/or actual ability to influence decisions made in the context of a HE institution or administration; but it qualifies it in terms of (a) the multilevel nature, (b) the extent, and (c) the degree arguing that student participation is – inevitably – a complex, multifaceted phenomenon.

• (a) The multilevel nature of student participation comes from the observation that both HE governance and student representation are conducted within multilevel systems. As discussed earlier, the European-level policy making have stretched previously nationally governed HE policy making to be conducted also on the supranational level. At the same time, subnational levels – both regional and institutional – are also gaining strength in HE governance (de Boer and File 2009). And, in any case, the most vital decisions regarding the conduct of HE – on teaching and learning and research – still take place on the departmental level (Lizzio and Wilson 2009; Pabian and Minksová 2011). Such multilevel governance of HE inevitably induces multilevel student representation.

  ESU congregates the national representative student organisations. These are the ones recognized to represent student interests on the national level, either through legal provisions or informally by the governments. In a majority of cases the line of organizing goes from individual students who elect their representatives – directly or via faculty – to institutional representative student organisations. On the national level, these come together in a national student union or a network of regional or institutional organisations. Just as the models of HE governance vary across countries, regions and institutions (Paradeise et al. 2009; de Boer and File 2009) so do also models of student representation and concomitantly their participatory mechanisms. Both models are embedded in the national legislative and historical context, and the closer one investigates them, the more evident are the differences.

  That there is a great variety of national models of student representation is well known in practice, but largely absent from scholarly literature (Klemenčič 2011a, b). All representative student organisations are similar in that their representatives participate in HE governance on national and institutional level, they provide student services, and they congregate within the European Students’ Union. Yet there are significant differences among them in terms of their governance – even on basic parameters such as whether their existence is stipulated in primary legislation or not; whether their membership is automatic, compulsory or voluntary; what and how stable their sources of financing are; and what their political structures are (council, union or both). These differences reflect the different models of student interest intermediation and they effect the various relationship constellations involving students, and hence student participation.

• (b) The ‘domain’ of student participation in this chapter is extended to include, in addition to the formal area of governing and management, also the areas of quality assurance [QA], and student-centred learning. Typically, the studies of student participation refer only to the various areas of governing and the underlying regulative decisions (e.g. regarding institutional mission and profiles, budgetary and financial, study programmes and curriculum), i.e. the areas of ‘formal participation’ (Persson 2004). There is, however, an emerging awareness that ‘informal participation’, such as in QA and student centred learning, may be equally important from the standpoint of achieving ‘academic democracy’ since these domains too create opportunities for and experiences of democratic involvement (Molander 2002; Boland 2005; Menon 2003, 2005; Bartley et al. 2010; Klemenčič 2010).

  In fact, all of these different domains of student participation are interlinked and may be mutually reinforcing. Biesta (2007: 4) argues that HE institutions ‘always already are sites of citizenship, simply because they are part of the lives of those who ‘inhabit’ such institutions, either as students or as staff, and as such provide a range of experiences that are potentially significant for civic learning […]’. At the same time, ‘the most significant “lessons” in citizenship actually are the result of what people learn from their participation (or for that matter: nonparticipation) in the communities and practices that make up their everyday life’ (ibid.). According to these notions, academic democracy does not include only the student involvement in university senates and boards, but also individual students’ participation in, for example, course evaluations, and in the great variety of student-led ‘extracurricular’ activities that compose the overall student experience. Institutions can create enabling conditions for such involvement, and link it to the curricular activities, and thus not only offer practical opportunities for active democratic participation, but they also transmit norms, values and attitudes to this effect.

  The Bologna Process has made significant advances in the area of QA, and student participation has been affirmed as an integral aspect of it (Brus et al. 2007; Gibbs and Ashton 2007; Bologna Process 2003, 2005b). Similarly, modernisation agenda also propagates QA and highlight involvement of all stakeholders, including students. Student participation is specifically mentioned both in the external procedures and in the internal QA of programmes and awards, as well as in the evaluation of the QA agencies which need to show that they have a ‘strategy for student participation’ (Bologna Process 2005b: 16, 21, 37). The terms of student involvement in QA vary from being consulted in surveys, institutional self-assessment reports and external reviews to being involved as members (with varying degrees of responsibilities) of internal self-evaluation groups, external review panels and consultative bodies of national QA agencies. Finally, students can also be involved in the governing aspects of QA within institutions and within external QA bodies.¹

  Related to QA, we are also witnessing development of informal student participation in the context of institutional efforts to enhance the ‘total student learning experience’. The UK is at the forefront of this development with the National Student Survey² conducted annually across all publicly funded HE institutions surveying students’ learning experience in terms of teaching, assessment and feedback, academic support, learning resources, and also personal development. Another related survey is the Times Higher Awards for ‘Best Student Experience’ which evaluates HE institutions also on indicators such as good community atmosphere, extracurricular activities and societies and good student union.³ It is not surprising that HE institutions striving to improve their ratings in such surveys seek to involve more systematically individual students and student groups and organisations into institutional efforts to enhance student experience. The emphasis is on amplifying ‘student voice’ through a new style of student engagement that would ultimately lead to enhanced student learning experience and better met student expectations. The idea is to develop institutional and student union processes and practices, such as those relating to student representation, student feedback and student services, to ‘enhance the collective student learning experience, as distinct from specific teaching, learning and assessment activities that are designed to enhance individual students’ engagement with their own learning’ (Little et al. 2009: 3).

  Finally, the renaissance of student centred learning in the EHEA implies enabling conditions for informal student participation in the organisation and the processes and contents of teaching, and thus increased control over own learning (Bologna Process 2009).⁴ In terms of the domains, student involvement in student centred learning takes place in the micro-environment of the classroom in the interactions between professors and students; it is, however, not confined to this domain. Similarly as in the case of QA, a systematic institutional approach is required and that needs to be supported by appropriate institutional polices (ESU and EI 2010). Hence students participate in the consultative role feeding into the design of practices; and formally in the governing structures deciding on policies and strategies regarding student centred learning on all levels of HE governance.

• (c) The degree of participation is another defining element in the social meaning and effects of student participation. The degree of participation ranges from access to information as the basic degree of participation, to consultation and dialogue, and finally to partnership as the highest degree (Klemenčič 2011a: 12–13). Access to information is the basis for all subsequent levels of participation. It implies a one-way provision of information from the administration to representative student bodies. At the level of consultation, the administration solicits student representatives’ opinion on specific issues. The (structured) dialogue is a more advanced form of participation since student representative bodies and administration hold regular (formal or informal) exchange of views built on mutual interests and potentially shared objectives. Practically this means that student representatives are involved in various consultative committees where they perform advisory functions or are informally consulted on a regular basis. They have opportunities to launch their own agenda issues. They do not, however, have formal decision-making powers, i.e. voting or veto rights. This degree of participation is reached only through partnership which implies shared responsibilities in each step of the institutional decision-making process: agenda setting, drafting, decision-taking, implementation and monitoring of institutional decisions. While most of the policy references in the Bologna Process are concerned with the question whether there should be student involvement, the profound differences between the different degrees of participation point to the need to qualify how student participation should be exercised.

  While we cannot ignore the diversity of HE governance structures, nor the diversity of forms of student representation across Europe, there is, however, evidence of overarching reform processes with profound effects on the conception of students’ role and on the key relationship constellations involving the students: with the state, university and academics, and within the student body itself. The EHEA policies offer one impetus for reforms. The other impetus comes from the modernisation agenda for universities containing the paradigm of a new public management approach to university governance and implying changes in the relationship between the state and HE institutions. The mechanisms and instruments that follow from this approach have – so this chapter argues – significantly transformed the conceptions of students, the various relationship constellations involving students, and ultimately the conceptions of student participation in HE governance.

3 Student Participation as an EHEA Principle

In the context of the Bologna Process, there has been virtually unprecedented political affirmation of student participation in HE governance by European Ministers. The Ministers have spoken in favour of both: student involvement in the policy making towards the emerging EHEA (Bologna Process 2001), and student participation in the HE decision-making on all levels: institutional, national and European (Bologna Process 2001, 2010). In fact, student participation emerged as one of the EHEA principles, and in several variations as: (a) a procedural principle, (b) a substantial value and (c) a policy objective.⁵

• (a) Student representation was ‘neither foreseen nor much talked about at the Bologna Conference’ (Bergan 2004: 3; see also Klemenčič 2011b). ESU⁶ – not formally involved with drafting Bologna Declaration – expressed regret and hope ‘that in future discussions, NUSes will be consulted at the national level and that ESIB will be consulted at the European level’ (ESU 1999). ESU’s demands fell on fruitful ground as there was a shared concern among the participants to adopt a more participatory approach to the Process governance.⁷ Representatives of stakeholders that would be affected by the policies were invited to participate in the Process to contribute to effective policy-making and implementation as well as for the legitimization of the Process. Some Ministers – especially from the countries with corporatist tradition of student interest intermediation – actively pushed for it (Bergan 2004; Klemenčič 2011b). The more reluctant ones – from countries will less developed structures and traditions of student representation – could be persuaded on the account that students, which appeared in favour of the reforms, could be an important ally to governments requesting changes where institutions may be more reluctant to implement them. Ultimately, given the predominant model of participatory HE governance across Europe, to involve students (and other stakeholders) effectively meant that ‘the Bologna Process would be in better conformity with the situation in most of its constituent parties’ (Bergan 2004: 3).

  Student participation began to emerge as a procedural principle with the Prague Communiqué (Bologna Process 2001) which paved the way for formal student participation: ‘the involvement of universities and other HE institutions and of students as competent, active and constructive partners in the establishment and shaping of a European HE Area is needed and welcomed’. ESU was acknowledged as the sole representative of the students and, in 2003, together with several other stakeholders obtained consultative membership (Bologna Process 2003). Effectively this meant that ESU and other consultative members were involved in a structured dialogue with governments (and the European Commission); with speaking, but no formal decision making rights or rights to veto, and no possibility to assume formal positions of a chair of the governing bodies. Given the consensual nature of Bologna Processes’ decision making such status implies de facto considerable influence. The relative weakness of ESU compared to the full members comes perhaps from the lack of competences to assume the chairing role. The role of a chair in consensual negotiation settings has been shown to carry a considerable leverage by the way of agenda setting and brokerage (Tallberg 2004).

  At the same time, there were new opportunity structures opening up for ESU within the EHEA. ESU assumed a role also in several ‘spin-off’ initiatives within EHEA. For example, ESU became a formal partner in the new European Network of Quality Assurance Agencies. An informal ‘E4 Group’ was formed within the Process consisting of ESU, ENQA, EUA and EURASHE to represent the views of the stakeholders and to offer expert participation within the various Bologna-related processes, such as the developments of the European Qualifications Framework, and the European Register for Quality Assurance Agencies in HE. There has also been a visible increase in ESU’s participation in EU-funded projects, both as a lead coordinating party and as a partner in joint projects (Klemenčič 2011b).

  ESU strengthened its organisational capacity and further professionalised maintaining quality input into the process (Klemenčič 2011b). It used its role to bring several of its most salient policy issues onto the agenda of the Bologna Process. One of them has been strengthening student participation in institutional and national HE governance, and others include the recognition of the multiple purposes of education, the social dimension in HE including consolidation of the principle of education as a public good and public responsibility. The real strength of ESU in the Bologna Process has been, as Sjur Bergan of the Council of Europe suggests, that ‘student representatives […] certainly stood up for student rights but […] have not seen their mission only as engaging on a limited range of issues’ (Bergan 2011: 264).

• (b) Largely to the credit of ESU prominent role in the Process, the issue of student participation in the institutional and national HE governance was also affirmed as a ‘substantial value’ and as a ‘policy objective’ of the EHEA. The Ministers stated that students ‘should participate in and influence the organisation and content of education at universities and other HE institutions’ (Bologna Process 2001), that they ‘fully support staff and student participation in decision-making structures at European, national and institutional levels’ (Bologna Process 2010) and that students are ‘full partners in HE governance’ (Bologna Process 2003). As such, they have expressed to judge student participation as important and as a value guiding our understanding, acting, governing (cf. Chap. 2 by Zgaga).

• (c) Furthermore, student participation gradually emerged as a ‘commonly agreed Bologna objective’, i.e. as an objective that ought to be pursued in the construction of the EHEA, and, accordingly, as a ‘standard’ by which EHEA and its underlying policy actions will also be evaluated and judged (cf. Chap. 2 by Zgaga). The strongest wording towards such normative goal was visible in the Berlin Communiqué (Bologna Process 2003), where the Ministers called on institutions and student organisations ‘to identify ways of increasing actual student involvement in HE governance’ (Bologna Process 2003). Still, student participation was left largely undefined, even ambiguous in terms of the extent and degree of student participation advocated. The ambiguity in wording allows each government and institution to interpret it and to organise it within its own national and institutional context and interests. In other words, the full meaning and its impact depends on the negotiated interpretation between the policy actors involved. Given the consensual nature of the Bologna Process, such conceptual and normative ambiguity indicates a policy formulation strategy which was ‘in offensive’ against potential opposition or rejection by individual governments or HE institutions.

  Less contentious – and hence stronger in wording – has been the reference to student participation in the area of QA. Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance (ESG) adopted within the Bologna Process basically made student participation in external and internal QA procedures mandatory (Bologna Process 2005a, b). Following the adoption of ESG, it was noted already in London Communiqué (Bologna Process 2007) that ‘[t]he extent of student involvement at all levels has increased […], although improvement is still necessary’. Furthermore, student involvement was highlighted also in relation to the student centred learning (Bologna Process 2009): ‘Academics, in close cooperation with student and employer representatives, will continue to develop learning outcomes and international reference points for a growing number of subject areas’.

  All in all, student participation has been fully consolidated in the Bologna Process as a procedural and substantial principle. It features also as a policy objective; however, as such it is neither fully defined nor qualified. The EHEA political endorsement of student participation has been used by national representative organisations as a leverage to consolidate or strengthen their participation in the national policy processes (Moscati 2009). The effects vary, however, among the countries depending on the pre-existing models of student interest intermediation. In countries with strong corporatist tradition, such as for example in the Nordic states, there was not much change since in these countries there already exists structured dialogue between national student unions and governments. In some parts of Europe, such as Central and South Eastern Europe, the political endorsement arguably led to an improved student participation in national-level HE policy making (ESU 2009). In other countries, like for example Spain, the European developments created enabling conditions for the institutional-level student organisations to further their cooperation on the national level, and thus strengthen their ability to influence national HE policy making. In sum, the general tendency across EHEA has been to involve student representatives in the national-level Bologna-initiated policy processes and implementation. Yet, there are also profound differences on national and institutional levels as to the extent and degree of student participation. The reasons for why more convergence in this regard cannot be seen are several. One is in the profound differences in structures and traditions of student representation. Related to the above discussion, the reason could be also in the normative ambiguity of the Bologna documents when it comes to the questions of the extent and degree of student participation. Finally, as it will be discussed in the next section, there is another powerful source of prescriptive policies emerging from the EU modernisation agenda, which has implications on student participation even if it does not tackle it in explicit terms.

4 Modernisation Agenda and the HE Reforms Across EHEA and the Evolving Relationship Constellations Involving Students

HE reforms are sweeping across Europe. In the early stages of the Bologna Process, it was effectively Bologna recommendations that ‘captured’ HE reform agenda across EHEA (Gornitzka 2010: 11). Those recommendations have largely focused on the structural convergence and convergence in terms of QA systems in order to support mobility. Just with a couple of years of delay, in the – subsumed – policy arena of the European Union, HE become highlighted as one of the key drivers of the economic competitiveness, a goal determined in the Lisbon Agenda, an influential action and development plan for the European economy. Lisbon Agenda paved the way for a deeper HE policy to be proposed by the European Commission. From 2003, a series of influential policy documents and related financial instruments were developed under a general heading of ‘HE modernisation agenda’. Both Bologna and European Union HE reform discourses became increasingly intertwined. Scholarly work suggests that the Bologna Process has been absorbed into the more general ‘stream’ of the Lisbon Agenda through a progressive convergence of documents (Capano and Piattoni 2011: 586). Specifically, the strategic role of HE in the promotion of competitiveness of European economy set out in the Lisbon Agenda has had implications on certain emphasises within the Bologna documents, and, more broadly, on the governance and funding reforms within the EHEA.

HE modernisation agenda has obvious ideational foundations in the new public management approach to HE governance (de Boer and File 2009).⁸ By incorporating management practices from the private sector to public services, the aim is to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of institutions by giving them more autonomy while demanding more accountability. There is an emphasis on a more indirect role of governments in steering the HE system. The principle of institutional autonomy implies granting institutions the right to decide by themselves on their internal organisation and conduct of their operations, while remaining accountable to their main stakeholders. In view of the quest for universities to be more responsive to the socio-economic demands, this approach favour participation of external ­stakeholders – especially from industry and government – to increase accountability and cultivate links with the broader environment (Teichler 2006; Bleiklie and Kogan 2007). These are typically included in the external university boards, as part of general tendency towards the creation of managerial infrastructures parallel to academic ones, leading to a shift in decision-making from the collegiate governing bodies to managerial bodies (de Boer et al. 2007; Amaral et al. 2003; Maassen 2003). The underlying expectation is for universities to act more as corporate institutions (Shattock 2009).

The increased autonomy of HE institutions does not mean that these are no longer accountable to the public. There has been a rise in external and internal evaluation and accountability mechanisms to this effect (Stensaker and Harvey 2011). Accountability means that HE institutions have to use public funds granted to them responsibly and pursue their operations in line with the governmental and general public expectations. The institutions need to demonstrate this through various performance evaluations and other control mechanisms. While the relationship between the state and institutions shifted from state control to state supervision (van Vught 1989), the state remains interventionist in an evaluative sense (Neave and van Vught 1991). The evaluative state has developed more procedural policies (Musselin 2009), and delegated evaluative competencies onto independent agencies, such as quality assurance and accreditation agencies, research funding agencies, education councils (de Boer et al. 2007).

The modernisation discourse also highlights that more funding is needed for European HE if it is to serve effectively the envisaged European knowledge economy and society and compete with the rest of the world. While the financing formulas continue to be debated across Europe, the overall trend is towards shifting the burden of financing public HE from the governments to the institutions. The public spending crisis across Europe – reflecting the global financial crisis – has largely reinforced this trend (Teixeira 2009). Institutions bearing a rising burden of self-financing are trying to compensate by strengthening links to business and industry, and especially by increasingly passing the cost burden onto students. The emerging discourse within the EHEA – accepted with varying degrees nationally and countered by several actors, most notably students – includes a shift in the conviction that the burden of HE financing lies exclusively or predominately with governments and thus taxpayers, to that of cost-sharing. For example, in Germany tuition fees were gradually introduced across the Bundesländer between 2006 and 2008, while in the United Kingdom (except in Scotland) tuition costs increased significantly in 2006, under the label of top-up fees (Eurostudent 2008: 83). The current trend is towards introduction of or increase in tuition fees (Eurydice 2007: 25–27). The notions of education as a public good and public responsibility, which implied tuition-free provision of HE has thus come under question.⁹ All in all, the diffusion of the modernisation agenda for universities into the Bologna Process brought forward two major tensions. One is regarding the priority purposes of HE: Does it performs a purely educational function or fulfils a social role? The other is concerning the role of HE: Is HE a public good or a service? The underlying tension is that of the role of students: Whether students are or should be conceived as costumers or full partners? Each conception implies a particular mode of relationships between institutions and students, and a correspondingly different narrative as to the justifications in favour or against student participation.¹⁰

While Bologna documents repeatedly declared that HE serves multiple purposes, it is public good and public responsibility, and students are full partners in HE governance, the modernisation discourse inherently challenges these notions. The following sections discuss the implications of the modernisation agenda on the various relationships involving students, and the conception of students.

4.1 Transformations in the Relationship Between the State and Students

Perhaps the key observation regarding the relationship between the state and the students is in that of the further erosion of ‘student exceptionalism’ as the governments subscribe to the new public management ideologies.¹¹ Introduction of plurality of stakeholders at all levels of HE governance – in interest of effective policy formulation, legitimisation of adopted policy and accountability – implies more governments’ coordination among diverse interests of multiple actors in the interconnected policy levels (de Boer et al. 2007; Olsen 2005). Students and academics no longer have the privileged access to the governments’ HE policy process. They have to share these privileges with other stakeholders, namely from the industry and employers. These actors have specific interests in HE provision, especially in terms of expected graduates’ competences and research outputs. They also tend to be sympathetic to the managerial ideologies applied to HE setting. In fact, their sheer presence and political leverage based on the economic weight contribute to consolidation of corporate values into HE. Students and academics continue to be inherently relevant constituencies, and cannot be – at least in principle – ignored from the policy process. However, their relative weight decreases with increasing number of actors involved in the policy process. In view of this, representatives of students and academics may emerge as ‘advocacy coalitions’ defending the predominance of educational purposes of HE as opposed to serving the needs of the industry.

While students’ influence may be deteriorating with involvement of external stakeholders in policy making, they are gaining influence as governments have passed the task of evaluative procedures onto independent quality assurance and accreditation agencies. QA is a powerful element of the new public management agenda, and student participation along with participation of other stakeholders is its vital element. In addition, the various ‘transparency and performance measuring tools’ promoted by the European Commission (2008b) and acknowledged by several governments are intended at empowering students to exercise an informed and effective choice of education provision.

As corporate culture increasingly permeates policy interactions within HE governance on national level, the representative organisations of students (and academics and staff) need to become more professionalised if they are to represent the interests of their constituencies effectively. Professionalisation of student unions is also desired by the governments for student representatives to contribute competently and constructively in the advisory and evaluative role they have been solicited to within quality assurance agencies and external reviews. Some governments, such as for example the Dutch, have increased funding of representative student organisations on national level (i.e. LSVb and ISO) with explanation that it wanted them to be more professionalised.

With similar intentions to ‘strengthen and vitalise student influence and strengthen the legitimacy of student unions’ the government of Sweden in 2010 abolished compulsory membership of student unions.¹² The government’s argument goes that each student ought to choose voluntarily whether to join the union or not; and having to recruit students into membership would ultimately professionalise the unions, and thus make them more effective. The governments allocated an annual grant to be distributed to student unions to ensure their participation ‘in the quality assurance procedures’ of both public and private HE institutions. The grant typically suffices to finance several union officers, but not to sustain the same extent of services and activities. For conducting these services and activities student union will need to fundraise from the institutional management and using membership fees. Such arrangement will inevitably transform the nature of student representation from more political to more entrepreneurial. Student unions ultimately assimilate into the managerial norms of conduct and corporatist practices at institutions depicted in the new public management approach (cf. Luescher-Mamashela 2010).

Finally, the social contract between the state and students in terms of the public funding of HE is – with different degrees in different national contexts – also being challenged. Here student exceptionalism in terms of their right to free tertiary education is challenged when compared to the rights of those not seeking such education. The justification for cost sharing is based on the argument of the private benefits to individuals for obtaining a HE degree in the form of higher earnings deriving from investment in their human capital – an argument that appear today much more in vogue than it was only 10 years ago. The introduction of or substantial increase in tuition fees in some countries have significant implications for student-university relations. Paying students conceived as customers rather than partners fits well into the emerging ideal of the modern corporate university.

4.2 Transformations in the Relationship Between the University and Students

As the European HE institutions assert their organisational autonomy towards the creation of managerial infrastructures parallel to academic ones, this has significant implications on the university-student relationships. First, there is a shift in decision-making from the collegiate governing bodies – where students tend to be formally represented – to managerial bodies where students are represented less or not at all. Strong executive leadership has come to be seen as a new ideal supplanting the representative democracy model. The composition of the university boards typically favours participation of external stakeholders. In case of Portugal, for example, the new provisions stipulate student participation in the Conselho Geral, but the minimal share of student representatives is not specified. The arguments given for the change revolved around disturbance of student representatives (in view of the fights over tuition fees) and the effectiveness of decision making. Concomitantly, the relative political weight of student representatives (as well as that of academics and staff) in these boards has decreased. Along with other internal stakeholder representatives, student representatives are increasingly being eclipsed by the executive leadership. Such reforms thus evince a trend away from the ideal of partnership, which implies that students are involved in all stages of the decision making, on all vital policy and strategy decisions, and that they act in decision-making capacity.

A combination of managerial organisational arrangements with introduction of (or increase in) tuition fees brings the institutions closer to the model of corporate university. In such model, students are conceived as costumers and academics as employees (Pabian and Minksová 2011). In the consumerist view of educational provisions, there is a contractual relationship between the institution as a provider of educational services and students as costumers of these services who are expecting value-for-money. Conceiving students as costumers appears to empower each student individually while representation of collective student body withers. Individual student is actively recruited by institutions competing on the education market. The transparency tools help the student to make an informed choice. Institutions seeking to meet student expectations develop internal quality assurance procedures to secure ‘customer satisfaction’. They are eager to obtain individual student feedback on the various aspects of services they offer in order to avoid complaints and maintain reputation for further recruitment. Indeed, an individual student as sovereign customer has a right to complain and demand better service; and if his complaints not remedied has an option to change institutions. However, as it has been often argued, customer rights are more difficult to enact in educational services than this may be the case in other industries (e.g. Bergan 2011: 263–264).¹³ There is significant time and financial investment involved in choice of HE provision.

Conceiving students as customers does not preclude student participation but it fundamentally transforms it. The contemporary institutional preference for student participation is clearly towards an advisory rather than decision making model, i.e. student participation in a form of consultation and quality assessment rather than partnership. Indeed, the institutional strategic emphasis on quality assurance and enhancing total student learning experience opens up new opportunity structures for student representatives. These informal forms of student involvement – where student representation is ‘instrumentalised’ in pursuit of the institutional quality agenda – may supplement full formal student participation in governing. Informal student participation can serve institutional leadership as an argument against student requests for more participation in governing. By involving students in QA, institutional management can argue the case that student participation exists and that this no longer needs to be a cause for political struggle. In other words, informal forms of student participation are convenient evidence for acceptance of student participation in principle. At the same time, students influence in governing is accommodated only to the extent that it does not compromise management control over the governing bodies and decisions. From the point of efficiency of decision making this is desirable for the leadership as students are assumed to hold adversary positions, and thus potentially disrupt or stall the decision making process.

Institutional leadership in corporate institution is more interested in student representatives’ expertise and ability to perform various student services and manage student facilities then their representativeness. Student unions tend to adapt to these changing institutional structures, practices, norms of appropriateness and the leadership expectations as to the student role. The corporate culture permeating institutional governance ultimately spills over to the student governance – perhaps not immediately, but gradually as new generations of student leaders join ranks. More political student groups within student governance become increasingly marginalised within the corporate university. The trend of entrepreneurialism in student representation is stronger where student governance is already more service-oriented rather than political (e.g. in the UK, Netherlands as opposed to typical French, Swiss, Italian unions). The less financial autonomy the institutional unions have, the quicker and more ideal is such transformation likely to be.

In sum, modernisation agenda is leading not only to re-conception of students, but also to a transformation of student representation. The trend is towards conceiving students as customers and professionalising and de-politicising student representation to play a role in institutional quality assurance and student services.

4.3 Transformations in the Relationship Between the Academics and Students

The changing organizational arrangements that appear to be weakening the influence of internal stakeholders may result in strengthened cooperation between students and academics in the formal governance. Both tend to agree on the importance of educational purposes of HE and the need to moderate the demands coming from the industry. Academics in general tend to be less supportive of the view that students should be regarded as customers than institutional leadership (Lomas 2007: 42). Such conception reinforces the conception of academics as employees in the educational enterprise whose role is to transmit course content. Their self-perception tends to be more all-encompassing and conceived within the notions of multiple purposes of education including that of serving the intellectual needs of their societies (Henkel 2000). Hence, there exists ground for advocacy coalitions between representatives from these two internal constituencies, assuming that these will continue to defend – as they have so far – the multiple purposes of HE.

In addition, a new cooperative relationship between the student and academic ‘estates’ may be developing within the student centred learning approach. As we are moving from teacher-centred towards learner-centred approach, the academics’ control over the curriculum contents and methods weaken while individual student’s autonomy and active involvement strengthens. Empirical studies show that students typically are interested in being involved in shaping the ‘content, curriculum and design’ of their courses (Bols and Freeman 2011), and thus this type of informal student participation is not subject to the same trend of weakening of political participation as we see in low turnouts in student elections. Conceptually, student centred learning appears to be more convergent with the conception of students as partners in a joint teaching and learning and research endeavour than that of students as customers which implies external and passive student role.

At the same time, academics are subject to more pedagogical and scientific evaluation within the QA frameworks. The results of these evaluations bare repercussions on reputation and financial rewards of academics. Students are involved in these frameworks as evaluators which somewhat undermines the traditional power imbalance between students and academics stemming from the academics’ role in the testing and certifying students’ acquisition of knowledge.

In sum, as academics autonomy may be weakened with various performance measures and students autonomy strengthened through student centred learning, these two estates might find more ground for cooperative arrangements not only within the classroom, but also within the governing structures.

4.4 Transformations in the Relationship Between Representative Student Bodies and Students

While on the one hand the representative student organisations across EHEA continue to pledge the case for more participation in institutional governance, they are on the other hand struggling to elicit participation in their own organisations. A major cross-national survey of student participation in university governance in Europe conducted by the Council of Europe (Bergan 2004; Persson 2004) suggests that although voter turnout in student elections varies considerably across Europe, it tends to be low: most of the time, less than half the student population elects those representing the whole student body, and in most cases voter turnout is actually one in three or less. Recruiting student representatives is generally less difficult. More challenging is, however, for student governments to effectively engage and represent interests of increasingly diverse body of students: lifelong learners, distance education students, those enrolled in transnational HE operations, and minority students according to religion, language/ethnicity, race, sexual orientations, etc. Involving these students requires special effort and makes policy making among groups with diverse and often conflicting interests more difficult.

The modernisation discourse eliciting the sense of higher education as a market place is also transmitting the notion of students as customers with choice of a higher education provider, right to complain over the quality of service provision and obligation to share a burden of cost of this provision. Such notions are intertwined with and reinforce the rising vocationalist orientations of contemporary student body as well as the culture of individualism. We can observe among students today a growing culture of individualism, a pre-eminence of self-interest and a preference for the benefit to the individual over concerns for the common good, and students appear increasingly concerned with prioritising personal advancement and gratification over moral and social meanings (Colby et al. 2007). Such orientations are typically not conducive to student political activism, be that in a form of active involvement in student unions (unless this is considered a way of improving career prospects) or in other forms of social engagement. Such orientations also do not fare well for these students’ active participation in our societies’ democratic processes and institutions. If higher education institutions do not act as ‘sites of citizenship and democratic participation’ and develop ample opportunities for academic democracy, they yield high opportunity costs of not contributing to sustaining and developing democratic societies (Klemenčič 2010). Student governments also have a key role to play in terms of capacity building of their own structures and raising student awareness.¹⁴

While the student body typically remains relatively dispassionate in the course of strictly educational reforms, it continues to be willing to engage in mass action when issues at stake tackle student welfare and financing, such as the introduction of or increase in tuition fees. While student protests are a permanent feature in HE space (Altbach 2006), we are witnessing expansion and strengthening of student movements across EHEA in the last decade. The common denominator of these student movements is a reaction to – what is broadly labelled as – the neoliberal approach to the HE reforms across Europe. The opposition to GATS in education, which used to be the most salient issue of student protests within the general opposition to commodification and commercialisation of HE, is now overshadowed by other issues: rising tuition fees, decreasing public spending on HE and the focus on the commercially-driven research and university-industry partnerships. Many of the protests are connected – at least virtually – through the initiatives called ‘unibrennt’ [university burns], and ‘unsereuni’ [our university].¹⁵ There are very different examples across Europe of how student representative organisations relate to the movements. In some countries – such as, for example, Austria – the formal student representative organisation acknowledges and participates in the movement. The growth in student movement depicts, however, the growing distance between the political decisions taken by the student political elites and those of their constituency. This trend is not only pertinent to student politics, but indeed also to nation politics. Taken together, the low turn-outs in student elections and the rise in student movements perhaps signal a growing detachment of the student body from the representative student organisations, their politics and policies.

5 Conclusion

The conceptions of student participation in HE governance in the context of the EHEA are caught in the two major tensions underlying the HE reform processes: that of the purposes of HE and that of its role. The Bologna Process policy documents declaratively affirm the equal importance of the multiple purposes of HE and qualify HE as a public good and public responsibility. The European Union’s modernisation agenda challenges these declarations by putting an emphasis on the HE’s service to the knowledge economy and of the private benefits to the individuals. While the Bologna documents do not offer prescriptive advice on governance reforms specifically, the European Commission’s contributions are elaborate and with distinct ideological underpinnings – those of the new public management in HE. The governments and HE institutions are subscribing to these recommendations near universally albeit with varying degrees and nuances based on national and institutional idiosyncrasies.

The new public management-based governance reforms of institutional structures, procedures and practices inevitably have implications on the relationships and balance of power between the key HE constituencies.¹⁶ The ideological underpinnings of the reforms construct within institutions new shared meanings, social norms and rules, which consequently influence not only actors’ behavioural choices, but also their interests and identities (cf. March and Olsen 1995: 30; Risse and Wiener 1999: 778). These interests and identities are learned and sustained through the iterative interactions within governance processes (Wendt 1999: 331). Gradually, but inevitably, students and student representatives (as well as other stakeholders) internalise the norms which then influence how they see themselves and what they perceive as their interests. The process of socialisation of student representatives is perhaps faster due to the volatile nature of student representation, and because the reforms offer new opportunity structures for student involvement (and not only curb the formal participation in governing, which would typically cause revolt).

Entailed in these reforms is an emerging conception of students as customers, which is supplementing or complementing the existing notions of students as core constituency and thus partners in democratic model of HE governance. Looking closely at the national and institutional realities across EHEA the changes in conception of students reflect the intensities of adoption of managerial approaches as well as the tradition and strength of student representation. In corporatist countries, such as the Nordic states, with mature and highly developed forms of student representation and with strong channels of student influence to HE governance, attempts are made to combine both conceptions. In contexts of weak student representation and enthusiastic managerial reforms of institutions, the conception of costumers may well be overriding the ‘traditional’ conception – based on participatory governance model – of students as partners.

Correspondingly to the changes in conception of students, the modes of student representation are being transformed. Student unions appear to be shifting from political role – where student representatives defend interests of the collective student body in relation to other constituencies within institutional governance – to professionalised, even entrepreneurial, role focusing on performing advisory function for quality assurance and delivering student services. The trend to professionalisation is reinforced by the new opportunity structures for student involvement emerging in the context of quality assurance especially. In line with new public management ideology, institutional leadership and governments have growing interest in professional student representative groups that can contribute competently and constructively in consultative, evaluative and service role; while they are less interested in these organisations’ representativeness.

The emerging modus operandi of student participation within EHEA is that of weakening formal student participation – as decision making powers in institutional governing bodies – and strengthening informal student participation through their involvement in quality assurance, activities related to enhancing student experience, and through student centred learning.