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Comment by nicoburns | Hacker News Reader

Do american universities not have student unions? They seem to be pretty effective at preventing this kind of thing in the UK...

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For the most part unions in the U.S. are ineffectual. Union membership is quite low and only in select industries. Pricing power for unions is virtually nonexistent. In addition to all this there are no unions for students worth mentioning. Students have very little negotiating power at this time.

Considering how weak labor unions are in the United States, the notion of an effective student union seems positively quaint. Oddly, in my experience the phrase "student union" usually refers to a campus center, not an actual union.

The "student union" in my school was basically one building with offices (which I assume they rented out) and a bagel shop. Beyond that I never heard of them doing anything, and certainly nothing that behaved like a union.

Yes there are student unions but they are mostly just involved in planning social activities if you can believe that. They're completely useless for changing any type of administrative policy.

That's because here in the US students don't think of it as a union. If the student union became a real thing where students collectively threw their weight around by making demands and staging protests/walkouts/etc. it would lead to change in administrative policy.

How do they do this in the UK? I mean, what's the mechanism? Do they have a formal seat at the table for textbook decisions, or do they just organise marches against lecturers who disobey, or what? (Seriously asking.)

I also had the idea that there was a culture difference, under which US courses tended to follow a book, while UK courses tended to follow a fixed path local to the university, slowly adapting the notes of what the last guy taught, etc.

That cultural difference certainly seems to exist. A few courses follow a book, but a lot don't I would say.

At least at my university (the University of Bristol), the Student Union had a formal seat (or multiple) at the table for pretty much every decision the university took (whether they were listened to is another matter, but they we're certainly there).

The relationship between the university and the students union was also pretty friendly. There was no need to march against lecturers, because the people in the departments whose job it was to work with student representatives were usually pretty happy to reduce course costs where possible. It's basically a win-win situation, so why not!

Thanks!

Our school had a student congress with a much more direct working relationship with administration on behalf of the students than the union ever did.

Interestingly, one of my good friends for a year was a student from France who was amazed at how much more we were getting done in classes, because we weren't constantly going on strike like he was used to.

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