Student governance in transition : University democratisation and managerialism : a governance approach to the study of student politics and the case of the University of Cape Town

Includes bibliographical references (p. 209.245).In the aftermath of university democratisation, only one critical change in university governance has sparked nearly as much academic interest and debate: the rise of managerialism. The participation of students in university governance was the key issue in debates on university democratisation; however, in the recent debates about managerialism in universities, there is little mention of the new place of students in university governance. This dissertation revisits the general topic of student participation in university governance. It sets out to provide a theoretical and empirical perspective on the interaction between university democratisation and the rise of managerialism in terms of their respective impacts on student participation in university governance. It does so in a number of ways: (i) based on a literature review of international debates and trends; (ii) by developing a theoretical framework for a governance approach applied to higher education, and; (iii) through an extended case study of student politics and transitions of university governance. In the theoretical investigation, I adapt Goran Hyden's theoretical conceptualisation of 'governance' for a study of student participation in university governance. Key to the adaptation is a typology of four ideal-type regimes of student governance focused on respectively different conceptions of 'student' involved in different justifications of the inclusion (and exclusion) of students in formal decision-making in universities. This typology and related conceptualisations of regime transitions is nested within distinct 'visions' of the university and embedded in Hyden's general governance approach