Abstract:

Student participation in HE governance is considered one of the foundational values in European HE. It can be traced back to the medieval universities and it resurged with the student revolts in 1960s.Today, students as a collective body are in some way represented in HE governance in basically every European country. Accordingly we can find advanced – but also highly diversified – multilevel systems of student representation. The issue of student participation in HE governance has featured prominently in policy making within the Bologna Process. The European Ministers referred to student participation in affirmative terms in every Communiqué after the Prague Ministerial Summit in 2001. European Students’ Union [ESU], the representative platform of the European national unions of students, was granted a consultative membership and has participated in the governing structures of the Process. Yet, despite this high political involvement, ESU continues to report deteriorating student influence when it comes to institutional governance. This raises questions about the interactions and interrelations between student participation as a concept and social phenomenon and EHEA policy developments. The chapter addresses the ideational and normative foundations regarding student participation emerging from the two – intertwined – policy developments: the Bologna Process and the ‘modernisation agenda for universities’. In view of these developments, it investigates changes in the conception of student participation as depicted in the four main relationship constellations involving students: between the state and students, between university and students, between the academics and students, and between student representatives and students.