Questions about vice-chancellors

Public outrage at the scale of the salaries enjoyed by SA’s university vice-chancellors, exposed by an investigation by the Council for Higher Education, is entirely predictable. It is easy to decry the generous remuneration accorded to vicechancellors as a misuse of scarce public funds, given that in 2019 more half of them were taking home more than President Cyril Ramaphosa. Leading the pack was the University of Johannesburg, which provided its vice-chancellor with a R7.17m package, almost double the president’s R3.9m salary at the time.

But there are much bigger questions that need to be grappled with: who gets to decide how much vice-chancellors are worth, how should their pay be linked to the performance of the institutions they lead, and why is there so little transparency?

The council’s report has yet to be made public, but a summary of its findings has made its way into the public domain. It shows there is no consistency in how the remuneration of the vicechancellors and senior executives of SA’s 26 universities is determined, and at more than a third of these institutions the chair of council single-handedly conducted vice-chancellor performance evaluations and determined their financial awards. Poor performance rarely resulted in penalties, and there were numerous discrepancies between the information supplied to the council and that disclosed in annual reports, with a slew of fringe benefits hidden from public scrutiny.

Just like public servants, the vice-chancellors were consistently awarded above-inflation annual increases during the 15year period reviewed by the council, and their average total cost to company compared favourably with their counterparts in developed countries in US dollar terms. Yet there was no apparent link between remuneration and the research output of their universities, the number of master’s and doctoral graduates they produced, or the size of their academic enterprise.

There are many troubling aspects of the council ’ s findings, indicating the need for better institutional governance and greater public accountability. But there is a broader and equally problematic issue. Higher education, science & innovation minister Blade Nzimande commissioned the investigation in 2020. The report was completed three years ago and has sat with him since then.

Last week, he cancelled a presentation to parliament on its findings at the last minute, saying he first wanted to present the report to university council chairs. That is entirely inappropriate: he and the council are answerable to parliament, not to the institutions found lacking by its investigation.

Parliament’s supine legislators were entirely remiss in not insisting the presentation go ahead. And while the council presentation has made its way into the public domain, the report itself remains under wraps.

There is no justification for continuing to shield vice-chancellors. It is time for the minister to publish the report and for parliament to hold them and their institutions accountable. Only then can the debate about what they should earn get truly under way.