The Council for the Defence of British Universities (CDBU) has endorsed the British Academy’s call for a comprehensive review of higher education and encourages all members to lobby their MPs to call upon the new Prime Minister and his government to institute such a review as a matter of urgency. We have produced this template...Read More
The Annual General Meeting for 2026 of the Council for the Defence of British Universities will take place online via Zoom on Wednesday 22 July at 3pm. The meeting is open to members and non-members but only members have voting rights. Non-members are encouraged to fill out the membership application form on the website....Read More
We would like to wish all our members and subscribers a very Happy New Year! One highlight of last year was the launch of our Code of Ethical University Governance, written by Professor Steven Jones, a member of our Executive Committee. Professor Jones launched the Code at a successful event at the House of...Read More
Summary The CDBU Code of Ethical University Governance is underpinned by the principle that governing bodies have a substantive part to play in affirming higher education as a prized public asset. The Code encourages governors to see themselves as ambassadors for their sector, promoting the university to everyone in society and providing reassurance that income...Read More
The Council for the Defence of British Universities (CDBU) was established at Oxford in 2012 by Sir Keith Thomas. He worked tirelessly to recruit famous names from culture and science, law and the media, as well as academe, and set up an organisational infrastructure in double quick time. Government was instituting radical plans for HE...Read More
We are pleased to publish the results of one of our funded research projects. ‘Satisfied Customers?: Interrogating “the student experience” in the neoliberal university’, by Professor Leo McCann (University of York) explores UK students’ perspectives on the marketized university. The research found that UK university students are largely enthusiastic about the content and quality of their degrees,...Read More
Professor Karl Leydecker Senior Vice Principal Aberdeen University 26 November 2023 Dear Karl It has been a few years since we saw each other last when I left the University of Kent in the summer of 2007 to become professor of German in Swansea shortly after you arrived to head up the School of...Read More
Interview conducted by Sean McMahon Academic staff do the work that defines a university: teaching, scholarship and research. But too often in British universities the voices of academics are marginalised by undemocratic forms of governance. Top-down, unaccountable, corporate-style management has increasingly replaced collegial decision-making, stifling the autonomy of academics and impeding rather than facilitating academic...Read More
PRESS RELEASE: 19.07.23 “Government proposals to cap the student numbers on what they define as ‘low value degrees’ show once again the limits of market-driven thinking when applied to education. The value of a university degree can manifest itself in many ways after graduation and over a longer term than metrics deployed by the Office...Read More
Words by G.R Evans, Emeritus Professor of Medieval Theology, University of Cambridge and author of discussions of university governance and Histories of Oxford and Cambridge. Unvisited information? Staff and students may not ask themselves how their university or other provider of their higher education is run until they encounter a difficulty. In many years...Read More
