Who governs student experience?

Daniel Taylor looks at student experience - 'the golden thread running through the governance of all universities'

The student experience is where a university’s purpose meets its practice. It sits at the intersection of academic policy, institutional strategy and day-to-day operational delivery. It encompasses teaching, learning, assessment, pastoral support, resources and the wider environment in which students study. Few areas cut so directly to the purpose of higher education.

Student experience should be a golden thread through the governance of all universities, end-to-end, but there are discrete roles for the council/board, senate/academic board and executive. Increasingly, in the work I am doing in the sector, I’m seeing confusion, duplication and overlap around the governance of student experience. One symptom of this is an increasing number of student experience committees under boards/councils.

Misunderstanding this and adopting the wrong approach is not trivial. If the student voice is not credibly championed in governance, institutions risk having unhappy or underachieving students, which can lead to lower retention, negative National Student Survey (NSS) scores, and poorer outcomes, followed by an erosion of trust and reputational damage. The roles of senate, council and executive need to be sharply delineated, mutually understood and aligned with regulatory expectations if governance is to add value rather than confusion. This article tries to establish what good might look like.

Three primary roles

The student experience sits across governance boundaries. It is simultaneously an academic, strategic and operational concern, and therefore requires clarity about who does what. The governance system in a university distributes accountability among three primary authorities: council, senate and executive. Each must understand its sphere of responsibility and how assurance flows between them. Without that clarity, overlap, duplication and regulatory risk quickly follow.

1. The council

For boards/councils, the student experience is framed through responsibility for organisational mission, sustainability and the lens of fiduciary duty, regulatory assurance, and institutional strategy. Their responsibilities include:

• Understanding: What draws students to their university, what their expectations are, the known drivers of student satisfaction at their institution, how student experience, wellbeing and satisfaction are measured, managed and reported in their institution and key national reference points such as NSS and PTES.
• Risk oversight: Monitoring risks related to student outcomes, continuation rates, complaints, and reputational issues.
• Resourcing: Ensuring priority in resourcing to delivering good student outcomes, protecting student wellbeing and providing excellent teaching and learning is reflected in key strategies, operational plans, large projects and change programmes.
• Strategic direction: Helping shape the overall student experience strategy, including commitments to widening participation, employability, wellbeing, and inclusivity.
• Regulatory assurance: Ensuring that the institution meets the Office for Students’ conditions of registration, particularly Condition B (quality and standards) and Condition E (management and governance). Council members must be able to confirm that the student experience is being monitored and maintained to appropriate standards.

Council does not design curricula or set assessment, but it must be satisfied that students receive a high-quality academic experience (OfS B1) and that student outcomes are what they need to be to provide a valuable university education, and one which meets baseline thresholds (OfS B3). In short: assure, steer, resource, and hold to account.

1. The senate/academic board

Senate or academic board carries direct responsibility for the academic conditions that define and shape the student experience. Its remit typically includes:

• Academic standards: Approving regulations on assessment, progression, and awards; ensuring standards are secure, comparable and that regulations are fair to all students.
• Curriculum design and approval: Overseeing the creation, modification, and withdrawal of programmes, with attention to relevance, rigour and student outcomes.
• Assurance of the quality of student academic experience: Receiving external examiner reports, analysing student surveys and considering PSRB requirements.
• Academic support policies: Shaping policies on personal tutoring, feedback timeliness, learning resources and digital learning environments.
• Monitoring outcomes: Tracking continuation, completion, awarding gaps and employability/progression.

Senate therefore has both a guardian role (protecting standards and quality) and a developmental role (enhancing the learning environment). Importantly, it does not manage day-to-day delivery – that is the role of the executive – but it does set the framework in which much of student experience is shaped.

1. The executive

There’s more to the student experience area than the academic domain. The quality of estate and the resources available for teaching and learning to cite two examples are areas which sit more on the executive side that have a strong bearing.

The executive is responsible for the integrated delivery and operational coherence of the student experience across academic and professional domains. While the council and senate govern, the executive leads implementation, turning policy into practice and ensuring that the experience a prospect is promised is the experience a student receives. Its responsibilities include:

• Integration and delivery: Coordinating academic and professional services (teaching, estates, student support, digital infrastructure) to create a coherent, high-quality student journey.
• Operational assurance: Monitoring day-to-day performance, student feedback, and service-level measures; escalating risks through established governance routes.
• Evidence and reporting: Preparing the data, narratives, and analysis that underpin senate and council assurance: NSS, TEF evidence, OIA themes, continuation and attainment data.
• Culture and leadership: Embedding a culture of partnership with students and staff, ensuring responsiveness to feedback, and modelling accountability to both senate and council.
• Compliance and responsiveness: Ensuring the institution meets statutory and regulatory expectations (OfS Conditions B1–B5, CMA, Free Speech duties) through appropriate processes and monitoring.

The vice-chancellor, as accountable officer, is the linchpin of this system, connecting academic and corporate governance through credible evidence, operational delivery, and responsive leadership. In short: deliver, evidence, connect, and learn.

In a well-functioning governance system, council, senate, and the executive are interdependent but distinct. Council relies on senate for academic assurance and on the executive for delivery and evidence. Senate relies on the executive for implementation data and on council for strategic support. The executive relies on both to define expectations and to validate its performance. The interfaces between the three should be codified through reporting cycles, assurance maps, and shared committees, not left to personality or custom.

Nuance

The UK’s bicameral governance tradition gives senate (or academic board) sovereign authority for academic matters, while council carries corporate and fiduciary responsibility. In pre-1992 universities, this separation remains foundational: senate shapes the academic conditions that define student experience, and council safeguards mission, resources, and reputation.

Post-1992 universities, constituted under the 1992 Act, tend to operate within a more unitary model: governors hold ultimate responsibility, including for student experience, while academic boards provide informed advice and assurance on quality and standards.

In both traditions, governance fails when either body overreaches or when structured connectivity between academic and corporate governance is weak.

Where governance of student experience goes wrong

The potential for confusion is significant. If council oversteps and begins prescribing detail on assessment or programme approval, it trespasses into academic autonomy and management territory, and risks ultra vires decisions. If senate assumes it can determine strategic priorities for resources or capital projects, it strays into council’s fiduciary territory. If the executive starts setting academic policy or defining assurance criteria, it moves from delivery into rulemaking and weakens accountability. If the students’ union is asked to decide rather than advise and co-produce, the line between student partnership and governing authority erodes.

The real-world risks include:

• Student experience shortcomings: student experience doesn’t meet student expectation and institutional promise leading to poor outcomes, dissatisfaction and reputational damage.
• Regulatory failure: if neither body takes ownership of assurance, councils may find themselves unable to evidence compliance with OfS expectations.
• Poor outcomes: misalignment can delay decisions on student-experience related, leading to dissatisfaction and reputational harm.
• Cultural disengagement: students and staff may lose confidence in governance if accountability is muddled or decisions appear politicised.
• Executive confusion: without clarity, vice-chancellors and senior teams may face conflicting directions, slowing response to urgent issues such as complaints, NSS results, or access gaps.

Assurance and connectivity

The key to resolving these tensions is structured assurance. Council needs to receive evidence, from senate, that academic quality and standards are secure and that the student experience is being actively monitored. Senate, in turn, needs confidence that its analysis will be taken seriously and will inform council’s oversight.

Designing assurance that works

• Annual academic assurance report: A structured statement from senate to council setting out judgements on standards, outcomes, and student experience indicators, supported by evidence.
• Cross-representation: Non-voting governors on senate and appointed academics on council committees to strengthen mutual understanding.
• A single assurance map: show how NSS, PTES/PRES, external examiner themes, B3 indicators, graduate outcomes, complaints/appeals metrics (OIA-aligned) and PSRB conditions triangulate into judgments.
• Joint committees or task forces between the executive and senate, or senate and council: Especially on themes such as equality, diversity and inclusion, or digital learning, where the student experience cuts across academic and corporate domains.
• Clear escalation protocols: So senate can flag risks that require council intervention (e.g. which require or have significant implications on institutional resources, risk management, or strategic decision-making beyond academic judgement.).
• Students as partners: SU officers and course reps engaged early, with feedback loops that show what changed as a result.

The student voice

Neither senate nor council can discharge their role effectively without authentic engagement with the student voice. In practice, this means:

• Student membership: Student representatives on both senate and council, with appropriate induction and support.
• Evidence-based reporting on student experience: Analysis of, for instance, NSS and / PTES results, Student Union reports, internal surveys and complaints data.
• Dialogue not tokenism: Students should be seen as active contributors to governance discussions, not symbolic presence.

Senate’s engagement with the student voice tends to be more detailed and academic, focusing on learning and teaching. Council’s engagement is strategic and reputational, ensuring the whole institution remains student-centred.

Key questions for leaders

For vice-chancellors, secretaries, and governing body chairs, the following questions should test whether governance is working in practice:

• Are our promises to students being kept? How do we know?
• Does council receive credible, evidence-based assurance on student experience from senate?
• Does senate exercise genuine oversight of academic standards and quality, or does it function mainly as an advisory forum?
• Are students engaged as authentic participants in governance, or as token representatives?
• Do the council, senate and executive structures all respect the boundaries of governance and management, avoiding operational detail while ensuring accountability?
• How do reporting cycles align so that concerns about the student experience are escalated in real time?
• Can the board point to a clear, independent senate judgment on standards and student experience, supported by credible evidence?
• Do outcome trends meet B3 thresholds, and where they don’t, is there an agreed, resourced plan owned by the executive?
• Do complaints and appeals data meet OIA good practice (timeliness, fairness, learning)?
• Where do senate, council and the executive formally meet (committee, report, working group) and where exactly do issues escalate?

Conclusion

The concept of student experience was popularised in governance discourse in the early 2000s, shaped by the Dearing and Browne reviews. But universities have been driven by and governing student experience since their advent. Responding to regulation is just one part of the picture in the governance of student experience but it is an influential factor. What began as a pedagogical concern though, is now firmly a strategic one of prime importance to institutional governance, effective leadership and impact. It’s a measure of institutional success.

Effective governance of the student experience is the litmus test of institutional coherence and effectiveness. The student experience cannot be reduced to either an academic matter or a corporate matter it is both. Senate’s role is to safeguard and develop the academic framework; council’s role is to ensure resources, risks, and strategies align to deliver it. Confusion between the two weakens both.

When academic assurance, strategic oversight, and operational delivery align, universities demonstrate not just regulatory compliance but authentic stewardship of their educational mission. Independence with linkage, academic voice with corporate accountability, and authentic engagement with students themselves: this is the balance that ensures governance genuinely supports, rather than undermines, the student experience.