“Oh no. I paid for it myself.” I was at my first meeting last week as a new member of the Institute of Fundraising, congratulating someone on her good fortune in belonging to a charity able to pay for her university course. I had assumed that her employer was paying and she corrected me (rather matter-of-factly; she wasn’t making an issue of it). I didn’t ask what her course cost, but it must have been many hundreds of pounds at least.

Contrast that with the news last week that college lecturers have voted to boycott the Institute for Learning, membership of which is now required by statute, and which costs them £38 pa (reduced from the original £68 after lots of to-ing and fro-ing). Contrast that again with your own fee to CIPD - even student members pay £130.

What’s going on here? What’s not going on, I believe, is that college lecturers lack commitment. Those I’ve met in my decade and more as a college governor are universally committed to their students and therefore to gaining and enhancing professional skills in order to be helpful to them.

There are clearly underlying problems which complicate the particular issue of IfL membership, not least a period without pay rises and the looming changes to public sector pensions - most lecturers are seeing their standard of living fall, so now’s a bad time to force them to pay for something they used to get free.

And many seem pretty unimpressed with what they’re getting for their money. £38 is little more than a pound a week during term time, so though that is no doubt tough for a few, what really matters is value.

CIPD has 135,000 members, all of us choosing to be members. Though membership is the norm, it is still voluntary. Membership offers us good value.

Whether or not the recent trade union ballot really represents the views of the majority of lecturers isn’t the issue: there’s clearly a problem here, despite well-meant efforts by various parties, including John Hayes, the responsible minister.

As a college governor I want to see all our staff behaving as professionals, in the fullest sense of the term – and not just lecturers, because all our staff contribute to students’ success. A boycott by UCU, the lecturers union, raises the stakes and that’s a perfectly legitimate tactic, but we can’t leave it to a traditional ‘I-win-you-lose’ industrial dispute.

We must find a better way than this. Everyone wants to see college staff treated well, and respected as professionals, because that’s the best foundation for long-term success for colleges and, most important, for our students. Rather than bodge together an unsatisfactory compromise on specific issues, I’d much prefer to see a wholehearted review of how colleges work with our staff so we can craft a new way of working which will help us achieve that goal.