Consultation on proposed HE Governance Bill

We are watching the development of the HE Governance Bill and will protect the role of the Rector as well as student democracy.

In January this year the SRC responded to the Scottish Government consultation on the proposed Higher Education Governance (Scotland) Bill 2015.

Submissions of evidence to the Education and Culture Committee have now closed and you can find what we said in our submitted evidence here: HEGB 2015 (Scotland) GUSRC Response

In short we reiterated that we think the bill is massive overreach of central government and entirely unnecessary. Most disturbing however is the proposed change to the role of Rector.

The changes would effectively remove all influence from the Rector and introduce a new position of “chairing member” to University Court. The details of this are scant, however it is certain that hundreds of years of history would be ignored and potentially direct student democracy would be curtailed.

This is an issue which we are watching closely and we will keep students up-to-date as the committee gets under way in October.