NUS reform: No other way

In a letter to The Guardian, last year's NUS president told members of her desire to “ensure the NUS is representative of the students studying in 2008 – not 1968.” For too long, the NUS had been balancing on a precarious financial tightrope. The message: instigate radical reform or face collapse.

The NUS of 1968 was a body of idealists. At a watershed in the history of higher education, radicalist campaigns led by a small group of students representing a relatively homogeneous national student body could bring about the major modernising reforms all were seeking.

Today, seven million men and women study in further and higher education in the UK, facing the complex daily challenges of seeking to maintain course standards and to ensure that they are prepared for the changing world of graduate employment.

Far from seeking to represent such concerns to higher bodies, NUS conferences of late have tended to obsess over issues of international politics, areas over which they have no mandate, jurisdiction or influence. Over the years, days of precious conference time have been wasted discussing Israel and Palestine, a situation that many delegates have become increasingly frustrated with.

With little financial expertise in the organisation and little impetus to use conference time to discuss these issues, the NUS—ears closed to the advice of professional outsiders—is now facing ruin. Thankfully, pressure from 36 individual students' union members—not least a bellicose Imperial College Union—has this week brought about an extraordinary conference that has gone as far as ever before to creating a modern and effective NUS for students of today.

A “small but vocal group of Socialist Worker supporters” has previously been identified by the NUS executive as the major barrier to reform. Changes such as increasing mature, post-graduate and part-time student representation have been seen as an apparent challenge to their hegemony and desire to discuss the wider issues affecting our world.

Moreover, plans to create a streamlined, committee-based approach to policy making—with the inclusion of advice from external experts in finance and the law—have drawn accusations of removing power from conference. However, the seeking of qualified advice and the move towards an efficient—if a little less compelling—conference must be seen as progress. The 36 unions who have united to propose such policies must be praised for their actions.

With the further extraordinary conference required to fully ratify reforms due to be called in January, it is hoped that any further procrastination on this matter can be avoided and the annual conference of 2009 will not represent a wasted opportunity.