Foreword

The University-Charity is a trailblazing book. For the first time, the charity law lens is run comprehensively across the university sector and a range of new insights are generated. We are introduced to the implications of purpose-based governance for universities in matters such as student admissions, executive remuneration and fee setting. We are confronted with the formidable complexities that attend government entanglement with universities. We are challenged to think deeply about the problems that arise when universities sell assets in the furtherance of purpose. We are brought to the precipice: what is the point of universities in the first place? This last question, so dismally answered in much public discussion about universities today, is exactly the sort of question that has stood at the heart of charity law for hundreds of years.

Charity law thus forces us to face the fundamental question for higher education. And this underscores that Mary Synge’s book is not only trailblazing; it is also hugely important. Asking the charity question of universities promises to illuminate the university sector in ways that might otherwise elude. For instance, as Synge emphasises, charity law assists us to grasp the sense in which university education is a public good in which we all share, quite apart from career and life opportunities that individual students might enjoy. At the same time, asking the university question of charity law brings aspects of that body of law into sharper focus. By reflecting on universities, we see more clearly the importance of a distinction between the charity sector and the state. After all, universities point to, and confound, that distinction as few institutions do. So for those who seek a deeper understanding of charity law, this book is revelatory. And for those who care about universities, what they have been and what they might become, the book repays careful reading and re-reading. As Synge herself notes, charity law, while ancient, might just contain the resources needed to reimagine universities that will endure for the benefit of society.

Foreword

The relationships in a sector which covers institutions – some established over several centuries ago and some in the last quarter century – and a regulatory framework with its roots in the Elizabethan Statute of 1601 is likely to be complex.

Adding to this complexity have been other more recent developments including the influence of Government as a direct provider of research, teaching or other funding grants; the role of universities as part of the UK’s “soft power”; general public interest in the way that higher education encourages social mobility and, more recently, the changing nature of the relationship between universities and individual students as a result of the charging of fees.

In 2011-12 I undertook the statutory review of the 2006 Charities Act; many of my recommendations have made their way to the statute book in subsequent legislation, most notably in the 2022 Charities Act. In my work on that Report, I saw at first hand many of the challenges, inconsistencies and underlaps in charity law as it applies to the higher education sector. In this magisterial study, Mary Synge outlines the history and sets the issues properly in context. It will not necessarily be popular in a sector with many vested interests, but it plays a valuable role in identifying and analysing many tangled threads and raises issues which must inevitably and eventually be addressed if public confidence – that essential ingredient – in the regulation of the higher education sector is to be maintained.

David Palfreyman OBE
Leading expert on higher education law and co-author (with Dennis Farrington) of The Law of Higher Education (3^rd edn, OUP 2021)
Member of the Board of the Office for Students

Mary Synge offers very deep analysis of just how much a far greater recognition of the role charity law might play in providing a coherent framework for university management and governance, and hence might help solve the worrying problem of disaffection among academics and their distrust of the VC-qua-CEO – as well as providing greater clarity for the lay-members appointed to Councils/Boards as to just what is their task and fiduciary duty. A timely and important book, which just might prompt the OfS to review its ‘Principal Regulator’ function under the Charities Act 2011 …

This is a stimulating, comprehensive and innovative monograph, which deserves a warm welcome. It expounds with learned scholarship, verve and keen practicality, the recent history of statist developments in university and higher education law, where state intervention by regulation has led to internal incoherences in the law. The possible consequences for governance – and indeed charitable status in the case of the ex-polytechnics (now post-1992 universities) – are matters in respect of which Mary Synge engagingly displays a sensitive analysis of all the most up-to-date critical literature. She demonstrates the need for debate at university and practitioner level as a precursor to any duly necessary legislation. Charity and University lawyers will be grateful for the implicit assistance and guidance that this well thought out and impressive book provides. 

“Her analysis is complex but refreshingly clear: universities can be constructively viewed through the lens of charity law as a way to understand and guide them as independent, purpose-driven institutions within the context of a market-based, democratic society … strongly relevant to the American context and, despite its rigorous legal treatment of the issue, easily comprehended by a non-lawyer …

“I was fascinated by the relevance of its message … Synge’s book is courageous … Her message is applicable not just to top university officials, regulators and policymakers but also to mid-level officials, faculty and staff …

“I recommend this book for university executives, faculty, trustees, policymakers in higher education, students of nonprofit management, legal scholars, and, yes, law students who may find its broad relevance enlightening.”

Dennis R Young, Professor Emeritus at Case Western Reserve University and Georgia State University, Atlanta, USA

Voluntas, International Society for Third-Sector Research (ISTR)

“The book is a detailed analysis of doctrine, policy and regulatory guidance. This is appropriate – the devil is very often in the detail … [Synge’s] doctrinal analysis is of considerable practical value …

” … reformers should find [the book] difficult to ignore after they have had sight of it … this is an innovative and important book. It charts genuinely new ground … unusual for an area of scholarship to be largely untrodden … Synge’s meticulous text on the ‘university-charity’ should be credited with real originality. Its publication is a landmark.

“Synge has shown that there is, open to scholars, a viable and alternative means of distributing high quality legal research”

Dr John Picton, Reader in Law, University of Manchester

2023 Modern Law Review

“This compelling book deserves a wide readership among those with an interest in university governance and regulation, as well as among charity lawyers more generally. It is an illuminating and highly readable analysis of an unjustifiably neglected area, and a tour de force in the law of charities.”

Jonathan Fowles, Barrister, Serle Court

“I found it much more than just ‘interesting’. I read it attentively, admiringly, with hearty approval, and without doubting that  the praise your distinguished legal reviewers give it is deserved. … it is hugely important”

Duke Maskell, author of The New Idea of the University

“… a fascinating read”

Paul Bater, Chair, Charity Law Association Standing Tax Committee