Wednesday 26-11-2025 - 13:41

 

 

Lancaster University is undergoing a period of huge change, and I believe the student voice is being lost along the way.

 

 

In our continued efforts to re-embed students into this process of change, we took matters into our own hands to demonstrate to the University the value of meaningful student consultation, looking first at our college system.
 
As a mature student with a vocational background as an engineering apprentice, I came to Lancaster only to get a degree and find a job at the end of it – I had no idea it was a Collegiate University, let alone what that even meant. And yet, within five weeks I had been co-opted onto the JCR because running a pub quiz each week looked fun, and within the year, I had led 15 hour long bar crawls, organised a music festival, and made friends that I’m still stuck with today – without looking for it, I had found my community at Lancaster in my college, and my University experience was better for it. 

 

This experience is largely why I’m in the job I’m doing right now, and in the team this year at LUSU I’m surrounded by officers who are legitimately passionate about the value that Lancaster’s collegiate system brings to the student experience, each having similar stories to tell as myself. Our Activities Officer, Emily, had this to say:

“Being a part of my college whilst I was studying at Lancaster, particularly the college sport teams, was easily the most valuable experience I took from university. Being president of the JCR was incredibly rewarding and something that is unique to the college system at Lancaster. The future of colleges needs to be safeguarded and shaped by students who are at the heart of the community. Colleges provide greater opportunities to take part in sport which isn’t seen at other universities, they also provide a community for new students right through until they graduate.”

Emily Houston-Woods, LUSU Activities Officer 2025

 

 

Our college experiences at Lancaster makes the work being done by the University deeply personal to us; not because we don’t want to see change, I believe there is much that can be done to improve the Colleges for all students, but we cannot allow a redesign of this core part of the Lancaster experience which doesn’t put the wants and needs of students first.

 

Earlier this Term, we brought together student leaders from across JCRs, Liberation, and Academic Societies to create an official LUSU stance on what the future of Colleges should look like. 

 

This is what we agreed:

Colleges are for the core purpose of creating communities at Lancaster University, and community is built by the students in those colleges. College identities cannot be designed by committee, the work of all staff in the colleges should be focussed on supporting students to form those identities, communities, and traditions. We recognise that not every student will engage in the colleges, and thankfully we have hundreds of sports teams and societies which can provide that community for them instead.

We don’t currently have any oversight or transparency over the college membership fee. Students and their families pay £40 at the start of their studies believing it goes into funding student led events. But there is no accountability to prove it does; this is student money, at a time when there is not a lot of it to go around, students should be a core part of the process when deciding how it is spent.

College communal spaces should meet the core purpose of colleges – to support students to create student communities. Therefore, the way the space is used should be decided by the students in the college, with profitability being a consideration second to this core purpose. E.g. if students want their space to be a bar, it should be a bar without worry for it to need to make a profit, but equally if students want their space to be something else, that should also be delivered.

 

Following this crucial student-led work, I sent our full proposed design to the interim-Vice Chancellor and other University leaders. I will endeavour to publish the full proposal in due course, however due to the sensitivity of its contents it is not something I can do right now.

 

I am now in conversations with University senior leaders and continuing to push for a future in our Colleges that is: transparent and accountable, democratically and student-led, and laser-focus on the best possible experience for Lancaster students. 

 

The communities and friendships built within Lancaster’s college system are the core to their success, and if that success is to continue students need to be at the heart of their design for the future.