Postgraduate Student Associations: an analytic, a synthetic, or an a posteriori ontology?

I provide argument that the postgraduate student association should be treated as a topic worthy of research interest in its own right which cannot be captured fully in analyses under the topics either of higher education management or of general student union governed representation structures and practices. I go on to provide a conceptual framework for characterising the institutional postgraduate student association in terms of a tripartite typology of ideal forms. The three forms are Society, Standing Committee and Autonomous Union.