Despite profound changes to the higher education sector in the UK over recent years, which have tended to emphasise the role of prospective students as active choosers within a marketplace and encourage higher education institutions to place more emphasis on student engagement and representation as a means of improving the quality of the learning experience, the role of students' unions has remained largely unexplored. To start to redress this gap, this paper draws on a UK-wide survey of students' union officers and a series of focus groups with 86 students and higher education staff in ten case study institutions. It outlines the ways in which students' unions are believed, by those closely involved with them, to have changed over recent years, focussing on: the shift towards a much greater focus on representation in the role and function of the students' union; the increasing importance of non-elected officers; and the emergence of more co-operative relationships between the students' union and senior institutional management. The article then discusses the implications of these findings for both our understanding of the political engagement of students, and theorising student involvement in the governance of higher education institutions.

This article explores the economic relationships between individual students' unions and their wider institutions, and the ways in which they articulate with a pervasive consumerist agenda across the higher education sector. We draw on data from a UK-wide study to argue that students' unions have an ambivalent relationship with consumerist discourses: on the one hand, they often reject the premise that the higher education student is best conceptualised as a consumer, and yet, on the other hand, they frequently accept aspects of consumerism as a means of, for example, trying to protect their independence and autonomy. We explore whether this particular form of positioning with respect to consumerism is best conceptualised as a form of resistance, or whether it has become extremely difficult for students' unions to take up any other position in a system that is driven by market logic.

This article seeks to further our knowledge of the university campus by focusing on one particular aspect of most UK campuses: the students' union. UK students' unions have rarely been the subject of scholarly attention, despite them now occupying an important place within the higher education landscape. Nevertheless, in this paper we draw on a UKwide study of students' unions to explore, firstly, the role played by the buildings of the students' union and, secondly, the ways in which aspects of the university's campus influence union activity. We pay particular attention to the expansion of the university campus, in many institutions, from a single site to multiple sites, both within the UK and overseas. We contend that a focus on the materiality of the students' union and the level of union activity (or inactivity) across various campus spaces can illustrate the values, ideologies and power relations that dominate contemporary British higher education. Les espaces des bureaux des etudiants: elargissement des geographies critiques des campus universitaires RÉSUMÉCet article tente d'améliorer notre connaissance du campus universitaire en nous concentrant sur un aspect particulier à la plupart des campus du Royaume-Uni : le bureau des étudiants. Les bureaux des étudiants du Royaume-Uni ont rarement fait l'objet de recherches intellectuelles, bien qu'ils occupent maintenant une place importante dans le paysage des études supérieures. Pourtant, dans cet article, nous exploitons une étude des bureaux des étudiants faite dans tout le Royaume-Uni, pour explorer, premièrement, le rôle joué par les bâtiments du bureau des étudiants et, deuxièmement, les manières dont certains aspects du campus universitaire influencent l'activité du bureau. Nous accordons une attention particulière à l'agrandissement du campus universitaire, dans beaucoup d'institutions, d'un seul site à plusieurs sites, à la fois au Royaume-Uni et à l'étranger. Nous arguons qu'un intérêt particulier sur la matérialité du bureau des étudiants et le niveau d'activité du bureau (ou d'inactivité) dans les espaces de divers campus peuvent illustrer les valeurs, idéologies et relations de pouvoir qui dominent l'éducation supérieure britannique contemporaine.

Drawing on a national survey of students' union officers and staff, and a series of 24 focus groups involving both union officers and institutional senior managers, this article explores the characteristics of those who take up leadership roles in their (higher education) students' union. We show that, in several areas -and particularly in relation to gender, ethnicity and age -union leaders do not represent well the diversity of the wider student body. In explaining these inequalities, we argue that friendship groups and other peer networks play a significant role in determining who does and does not take up leadership positions. Moreover, as friendship groups are often formed on the basis of 'differential association' and are thus frequently socially homogenous, inequalities tend to be perpetuated. Wider institutional cultures and societal norms are also implicated.