Student voices on the global policy-making stage are growing

Organisations representing students exist at most universities and colleges in the world, but their involvement in institutional decision-making varies significantly: from no involvement and needs-based consultation to representing at least a third of all members in academic senates.

The most common share of votes that students have in academic senates is 15% to 25%. In the Czech Republic, at least one-third of the senate members and one-half of the whole plenum must be students.

In countries that gained independence and democratised in the late 20th century, students were a key political force in overturning the regimes, and were granted representation in higher education governance as part of setting up democratic institutions.

In non-democratic countries, student organisations exist, too, but their autonomy is questionable, and their involvement in institutional governance is at best limited to consultations. For example, in Oman, student advisory councils that were introduced after the Arab Spring have no formal authority in institutional decision processes and no national-level student association exists.

In Chinese higher education institutions, there are effectively two co-existing types of student organisations: student unions which represent students in university governing bodies, and student associations organised by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), with the latter holding significantly more influence.

In private institutions, student governments provide student services, organise extracurricular activities and may be consulted in decision-making processes at the discretion of institutional leaders.

National public policy processes

In national public policy processes, national student associations are much less common than at universities and colleges.

In European countries, student involvement in public policy processes is well established, and often one national student union holds a monopoly on representing student interests. Most national unions in Western Europe have a long tradition of existence, from the early 20th century on.

In former colonies, the establishment of national unions followed national independence and was part of establishing democratic institutions.

A pluralist model of national student representation also exists with several student organisations competing for influence in national public policy processes, as in Italy or in the statist French system, where political party-affiliated student unions compete in student elections for seats in two governmental councils that effectively institutionalise student representation vis-à-vis the state.

Most countries in Southeast Asia have no recognised national student associations, with notable exceptions such as Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam. Pakistan is a country which outlawed student unions, though they do exist informally and have explicit links to political parties.

National-level representation is generally less likely to exist in non-democratic countries. Governments fear the political potency of organised student movements, which, as history has shown, helped overturn regimes in many parts of the world.

International organisations and intergovernmental processes

More recent developments in the 21st century include the strengthening of the student voice in regional international organisations and intergovernmental processes, such as in the
African Union, the Commonwealth, the European Higher Education Area and within the United Nations.

These developments follow an ideological turn in global higher education policy that now considers students not merely passive beneficiaries of education but as actors with agency over their own learning and political agency as partners vis-à-vis governments, educational leaders and other stakeholders when it comes to transforming education.

In 2022, the United Nations’ Transforming Education Summit took the unprecedented step of affirming young people’s and students’ role as partners in education policy and decision-making.

The Youth Declaration on Transforming Education issued as part of the summit unequivocally expresses the demand by young people for “decision-makers to engage with youth in all our diversity, including elected student representatives, in a meaningful, effective, diverse and safe manner in the design, implementation, execution, monitoring and evaluation of the process to transform education” and for “decision-makers to promote and invest in youth and student leadership and support systems for representation”.

One tangible follow-up is that UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report will add a new benchmark indicator on youth and student participation in education policy, making it part of measuring progress towards Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4: stocktaking of transformative actions in education.

The strongest advocates for involving students as partners in higher education decision-making have been student organisations, especially regional student associations, such as the All-Africa Students Union (AASU), the European Students’ Union (ESU), the Commonwealth Students’ Association (CSA) and the Latin American and Caribbean Student Organization (OCLAE).

In 2020, these regional organisations established the Global Student Forum (GSF) which serves as a global union of student organisations representing their interests in global policy processes. It is also an important platform for student organisations’ capacity-building through sharing of practices and collaboration.

GSF was an important player in the United Nations’ Transforming Education Summit and is involved in UNESCO’s youth engagement structures.

Regional associations are involved in key education policy initiatives, such as ESU’s and AASU’s involvement in developing regional quality assurance frameworks for higher education. Only OCLAE continues to operate more as a movement rather than an interest group, and tends to have more adversarial relationships with public authorities in the region.

A different kind of influence

If we accept the insightful suggestion by political scientist EE Schattschneider in 1935 that “new policies create a new politics”, then the United Nations Youth Declaration on Transforming Education could be highly consequential for the political organisation, political identities and political strategies of students as collective political actors in education governance and policy-making.

There remains a question, however, about the extent to which students will manage to capitalise on this United Nations’ declaration in countries where student representation is only tokenistic or in countries with significant barriers to democratic student representation.

Antagonistic relations between students and governments persist in many countries in the world as ongoing student protests demonstrate.

Tensions between students and governments have been aggravated by the introduction of neoliberal education policies, including decreasing public investment in higher education, a lack of social support for students and increasing tuition fees.

The shift from democratic elements in university governance to more corporate characteristics has also had an impact on student representation. These reforms diminished the authority of academic senates, where students tend to be represented, and increased the powers of university boards, where students typically do not have a vote.

Yet, the emerging global narrative of student agency in higher education and students as partners in transforming education suggests students have a role in education decision-making, even if the democratic ideals of educational governance diminish.

Students increasingly take roles as consultants, participate in various aspects of quality assurance or get university jobs to provide student services. These roles, too, grant students influence over the affairs of their universities and colleges, but it is a substantially different kind of influence than real democratic representation.

Manja Klemencic is senior researcher at the faculty of education, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, and associate at the department of sociology, faculty of arts and sciences, Harvard University, United States. E-mail: manjaklemencic@g.harvard.edu. This article is based on Klemencic, M (2024) (Ed), The Bloomsbury Handbook of Student Politics and Representation in Higher Education. London: Bloomsbury Academic (open access). It was first published in the current edition of International Higher Education.

This article is a commentary. Commentary articles are the opinion of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of University World News.