Thursday 09-11-2023 - 09:59

For many years, universities have established and developed formal relationships with other educational providers to deliver degree-level programmes in different ways. In recent years, students’ unions have reported to us that their universities are entering into more agreements with external institutions, often referred to as partner colleges or collaborative academic partners. 

We have worked with Bates Wells, along with a number of different students’ unions across the UK, to understand the challenges that SUs are experiencing in this space and to provide some guidance on defining an SU’s offer to those students.

Our resource for SUs provides an overview of the legal position in relation to partner college students and provides a framework for how an SU can actively engage in discussions with their institution. Our work with SUs has shown that a large number of institutions do not actively collaborate with their SUs when entering into partnership agreements. Some SUs have even reported to us that their institution defines what the SUs offer will be to partner college students without consulting the SU. 

Alongside this, our resource provides a number of key considerations an SU should make if its intitution works with partner colleges. This covers governance, representation, membership services, finances and communications.

We understand that different students' unions will find themselves in different stages of readiness for this work, so for further support please contact uniondevelopment@nus.org.uk 

You can access the full resource here.