As the president of a students’ association or union, you can expect to have your diary pretty much block-booked from day one. Trying to explain to friends last year that I was unavailable for lunch because I had a bout of university committees and other appointments, some of them double booked, to attend before I could afford myself a fifteen minute lunch break at about four o’clock was always difficult. Don’t get me wrong—I loved the job—but you have a very tight schedule.

One of the things that makes it so tight, however, is the mind numbing number of university committees, each with its own acronym, that you have to sit on. There’s the Finance and General Purposes Committee (F&GPC), Academic Policy Committee (APC) and the Student Affairs Forum (SAF). Then on top of that, there’s EPAG, SAG, TAG, SEAG and SIFTIG, and if you’re the Vice President Academic Affairs you’ve also got SQAEC, SMG and SPSC to worry about (to name but a few). I won’t go into the details of all the committees and what they stand for, but I will give a Mars Bar to the reader who first emails me the correct names for the above acronyms.

It’s easy for a sabbatical to get lost in all this bureaucracy, and to start speaking the select language of university administrators. When I met with sabbs from around the country last year, we'd all go off on some long ramble about an academic injustice, whilst using the specific language of our own institution, resulting, usually, in a chaos of incomprehension.

But there are some things that are the same everywhere. Every institution seems to have some kind of grand academic committee, the Senatus Academicus, or Senate, in Edinburgh’s case, and a chief committee, the Court. Every university has a mythical or symbolic figure at the top that is the Chancellor, and a Vice Chancellor and/or Principal that actually does the running of the university and has the power. In Scotland, at the Ancients (Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Dundee and St. Andrews) the staff and students elect a Rector to chair it the Court.

Chancellors are funny things. As I’ve said, they generally tend to be a little symbolic, not turning up very often or doing very much. So what are they actually for? Well, not an awful lot, other than perhaps as a little bit of decoration to up the profile of the university. That, I assume, is why Napier have finally settled on high-flying entrepreneur Tim Waterstone, of the book shop fame, following a gap of nearly four years, and Liverpool John Moores has appointed on the infamous Brian May of Queen.

And at Edinburgh, we’ve got HRH Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, whose full list of titles and honours goes on for several pages. I expect that there are few students still at the university who attended, as I did, the Annual General Meeting of 2003 during which a motion was put forwards to replace darling Phil the Greek with a piece of root ginger, as it might perhaps be more useful and suitable. At the time, I rather agreed. Now, I’m not quite so sure.

It’s easy to claim that it would be better to have an elected Chancellor who can be held accountable, but that instantly begs the question: accountable for what? Their role is generally so minimal it involves little more than turning up for the odd graduation and sitting still at it for an hour or so. What’s to be accountable there? Are we really suggesting that we should be able to recall a Chancellor based on his choice of tie or fidgeting to much during the ceremony?

No, Chancellors serve one purpose and one purpose alone. In the age of increased university fees and a serious shortfall between what governments are offering both north and south of the boarder and the sum universities need to be academically competitive, new sources of fundraising need to be considered. For the University of Edinburgh, having an associated royal is an exceptionally valuable fundraising tool. The same goes for Napier and John Moores. To continue to keep our standards high we need to be bringing the cash in and, sad as it may be, a crusty old duke may well be the best weapon we have on our side.