Daniel Taylor continues his series about academic senates with a practical guide

Regardless of constitutional status, universities must operate governance systems that function, deliver high quality academic assurance to councils, respect academic judgement, and avoid the structural and cultural failures increasingly evident across the sector.

Good academic governance is not defined by a diagram or a set of committees. It is defined by clarity of purpose, disciplined execution of responsibility, and an architecture that allows the governing body to discharge its legal duties without eroding the independence of academic judgement.

This article offers a practical framework for designing academic governance that meets regulatory expectations, supports strategic agility, and preserves academic independence.

Start with decision rights

The most common error in governance design is confusing information rights and decision rights. Committees talk, papers circulate, dashboards expand, but no one is sure who owns the decision, who advises on it, or who is accountable for its consequences. Academic governance works when the institution is clear that council owns accountability for the university and sets risk appetite, senate determines academic policy and standards, and management executes decisions and implements policy through operational leadership.

A robust model explicitly defines what senate decides, what it advises on, and what management owns on behalf of the institution. It also describes the limited circumstances under which council reserves a decision, namely when material corporate risk is triggered and only then. Escalation duties should be explicit, including when and how academic risks become corporate risks and must therefore be escalated to council.

Clarity at this level prevents the two most common and damaging behaviours in governance: duplication of effort and inadvertent micromanagement.

Senate - independent but linked

Most pre-92 institutions benefit from a model in which senate remains constitutionally independent but structurally connected to council. Independence matters. Senate must be able to make sovereign decisions relating to academic standards, integrity, and policy without being subordinated to corporate priorities. But independence without connectivity produces siloed governance and weakens the quality of academic assurance flowing to the governing body.

This balance is achieved through the senate terms of reference. These must define senate sovereign academic responsibilities, the boundary between intra vires and ultra vires activity, explicit escalation duties where academic risks become corporate risks, and the scope of senate assurance responsibilities to council. To be effective, these responsibilities must be written in terms that are operationally usable, not abstract values statements, and must map directly to reporting, escalation, and assurance cycles.

Formal assurance architecture

Council should not rely on anecdote, presentation decks, or episodic conversations to understand academic performance and risk. A formal assurance architecture helps council see the full picture. This should include an annual academic assurance report that synthesises external examiner findings, conditions and recommendations from professional, statutory and regulatory bodies, analysis of student outcomes, academic risk registers, statements on research integrity, and a short, evidence-based assurance opinion from senate.

In year, council should receive clear escalation when academic risks breach predefined thresholds. Assurance should be supported through verification mechanisms, including internal audit of academic processes and periodic external reviews of academic governance. The purpose of this architecture is not bureaucracy. It is to provide a triangulated and reliable view of academic standards and risk that enables council to exercise its statutory duties.

Interfaces between senate and council

Connectivity between senate and council prevents blind spots, avoids cultural misunderstanding, and accelerates shared ownership of the academic mission. This is best achieved through a small number of structured interfaces. These include cross representation, joint academic risk or quality committees, aligned reporting cycles, and an annual senate council seminar focusing on strategic priorities and emerging risks. These interactions must be regular and purposeful, not symbolic gestures designed to show compliance.

It is important to restate that connectivity does not mean subordination. Senate is not a subcommittee of council, nor is council engaged in academic decision-making. Instead, both bodies hold different parts of the same institutional duty. Academic integrity, public interest, institutional risk, and stewardship of the university as a corporate entity.

Avoiding common pitfalls

Many governance failures arise from role confusion rather than dysfunction. Councils can slip into academic detail when their oversight duty is poorly defined. This creates a dynamic in which governing bodies begin debating curriculum design, individual programme performance, or academic standards at a granular level. All of these belong to senate and management. The solution is to restate and reinforce council’s oversight role and senate’s decision rights, and to set clear expectations for the managerial execution of policy.

A second pitfall arises when senate drifts into executive decision-making, because its structures have not sufficiently distinguished between policy and oversight on the one hand, and operational delivery on the other. This can leave senate trying to solve management issues through governance mechanisms, undermining accountability and pace. Clear separation between academic policy formation and operational delivery is essential.

The third pitfall is a performative assurance culture, where governance becomes a stage on which institutions display confidence rather than investigate reality. Hard edged escalation triggers, evidence based academic assurance, and transparent reporting help avoid this by shifting the emphasis from narrative to evidence.

When a committee model is necessary, post-92 contexts

In post-92 institutions, where academic boards are in law subordinate to governors, the aim is to protect the independence of academic judgement within a committee system. This requires careful design. Terms of delegation must be explicit, including authority for the board to make recommendations on academic matters without interference in academic merits. Academic boards should have an elected academic majority, with published minutes to ensure transparency and legitimacy.

Critically, the chair of the academic board should have the right to submit independent academic assurance to council when required. Strong natural justice safeguards help ensure that academic judgement is not overridden without due process. Without these protections, academic boards can easily become symbolic rather than substantive, providing neither meaningful assurance nor a credible academic voice in institutional strategy.

What academic governance must deliver in 2026 and beyond

The real test of academic governance today is not constitutional, it is functional. Governance must deliver credible and triangulated academic assurance, rapid risk escalation, an informed academic voice at the heart of strategic decision-making, and clear boundaries between governance and management. It must provide confidence for regulators, PSRBs, students, and staff that standards are protected, risks are understood, and decisions are made on an evidence-based foundation.

When these elements are in place, the bicameral model works. Senate and council each hold their part of the institutional duty, without collapsing academic judgement into corporate control or isolating academic standards from strategic direction.

So, what it senate for?

Senate exists to provide independent, expert academic judgement that supports council to make lawful, strategic, and well-informed decisions while protecting the intellectual integrity of the institution. It is the mechanism that transforms distributed academic expertise into structured assurance for the governing body. In practice, senate enables universities to meet regulatory expectations without allowing academic judgement to be absorbed into corporate control.

Senate is the guardian of academic standards and the generator of credible academic assurance. It is indispensable.

Conclusion: the discipline of governance

Universities are often tempted to treat governance as a constitutional puzzle with a perfect structural solution waiting to be discovered. The reality is closer to what George Eliot observed about character. It is built through the consistent conduct of real duties, not through a single defining choice. Academic governance works when it is lived as a disciplined practice, not when it is imagined as an ideal model.

Structures matter, but they serve the deeper task of connecting academic judgement with institutional stewardship and public trust. A senate that knows its responsibilities, a council that understands its limits, and a management that accepts execution as its duty create a balance that is both principled and practical. The work is ongoing, iterative, and often invisible, but it is the work through which universities protect standards and realise their purpose.

Appendix

Constructive challenge - questions for council

Constructive challenge does not require technical expertise. It requires clarity about the governing body duty, confidence in asking questions, and discipline in distinguishing genuine assurance from reassurance. When receiving academic assurance, council members might ask:

Evidence and judgement

• What evidence underpins senate assurance opinion, and how has it been triangulated?
• How do we know that the data we receive on academic performance is accurate, complete and timely?
• Where are the weaknesses or uncertainties in the evidence base, and how are they being addressed?

Academic risk

• What are the material academic risks this year – and which have the potential to become corporate risks?
• What triggered escalation in the last reporting cycle and what changed as a result?
• How does the academic risk register connect to the institutional risk appetite?

External challenge

• What do external examiners, PSRBs and external reviewers tell us that we cannot see internally?
• Where have we failed to meet external expectations and what has been done about it?
• What are our benchmarking assumptions and are we confident they are valid?

Culture and behaviour

• How does the institution ensure that challenge within senate is robust and well evidenced?
• Are there indicators of cultural pressure that might inhibit escalation or disclosure?
• How is dissent surfaced, recorded, and resolved?

Boundary clarity

• What decisions are reserved to senate and how do we know those boundaries are respected in practice?
• Where is the separation between academic judgement and managerial delivery most vulnerable?
• How does council know it is not drifting into academic detail?

These questions are no substitute for specialist advice. Rather, they create the conditions in which academic assurance can be tested respectfully, based on evidence rather than narrative, and aligned to council legal duties.

They allow lay members to fulfil their accountability role without encroaching on academic judgement, and they create a governance environment in which senate expertise is properly valued and understood.