Student unionism is not in crisis

As students’ unions, it is our responsibility to advocate for the interests of all our members. These include those students who are most discriminated against, both in education and other parts of society.

That is why we believe it is wrong to suggest, as some contributors to Times Higher Education’s recent feature on student unionism did, that modern students’ unions focus too much on identity politics, to the detriment of their ability to do their core work of advocating for students on “bread-and-butter” issues.

Liberation issues and bread-and-butter issues do not sit on opposite ends of an imaginary relevance spectrum, and to suggest otherwise is harmful. Students on the ground are clear: they want us to attend to both. They increasingly want us both to support their student clubs and societies and to work with them on their campaigns. We are receiving growing requests for good-quality, flexible and fair student jobs alongside demands for more liberation, decolonisation and climate advocacy. We have record turnout at both our social events and student-led protests. 

While approval of unions is low, it is clear that this is not because students want us to change course. Rather, they want to see us supercharge liberation issues further. If anyone is advocating for a scaling back, it is not students but politicians – as well as institutions that are struggling to engage, serve and build trust with students.

The way students organise and operate has certainly changed dramatically. Students’ unions will need to do more to build and maintain students’ trust by changing our decision-making and power structures.

We recognise that many of our members have lost faith in the ability of elected politicians to lead in good faith and to follow the laws they make and demand that citizens follow. We know that students question power imbalances when they see elected leaders double back on manifesto promises or universities make decisions without engaging with students. These are problems not of students’ or students’ unions’ making, but we are not immune to the consequences.

We will adapt, however. And we will find new ways of supporting and empowering our students to work with us to effect change. This kind of desire to improve – to work with, as opposed to for – is not widely present within government or even universities. At least at the university level, though, students can realistically hope to obtain lasting policy change through relentless campaigning, lobbying and influencing.

In fairness, the THE article mainly questions the role and function of national student confederate bodies, rather than individual and local students’ unions. And there is no doubt that confederate organisations are complex to run – something shared by the Trades Union Congress and confederative charities, such as Mind, Age UK or Universities UK. The slightly opaque internal structures these bodies can acquire as they try to organise nationally while respecting layers of independence and autonomy locally can create an illusion of eternal power struggles that distract from the needs of their beneficiaries.

But we are not ready to give up on national organisations and confederate bodies. Not only do we believe in partnership and collaboration, we also think that now more than ever may be the time for confederate structures, precisely because they can work both nationally and locally.

The THE article also points to unions’ supposed refusal in recent years to engage with authority as central to the lack of national progress on student issues. But while, as it notes, ministers are “often at pains to show themselves as being on the side of students”, it is hard to believe in their sincerity – especially under Boris Johnson’s leadership, when universities ministers seemed more interested in using students (and universities) as stooges in their culture war than in constructively engaging with them. It was the government, after all, that suspended all dialogue with the National Union of Students (NUS) in May.

Students’ unions are neither too radical nor too disengaged to advocate for our students’ interests. But the disdain for students shown by this government is plain to see and students are not blind to it. Why should local students’ unions or the NUS expend precious resources on futile battles when it is clear that those in power will not even entertain our concerns?

Ben Vulliamy is CEO and Pierrick Roger is president of the University of York Students’ Union