SHAMELESS TO THE LAST
£468k university chief finally quits... but she’ll take six-month sabbatical on full pay first!
THE country’s highest-paid university chief announced last night that she will retire following months of calls for her to resign.
Dame Glynis Breakwell said she will leave her £468,000-a-year post in February 2019 but the last six months will be spent on paid sabbatical.
As she will take her full salary until retiring, this means she will pocket £234,000 after stepping down from her official duties.
The vice chancellor – who earns three times more than the Prime Minister – was accused of ‘milking’ the University of Bath by ex-Labour education minister Lord Adonis.
Dame Glynis will also have a £31,489 car loan written off by the university she has headed for 17 years.
She lives in a £2million grace-and-favour townhouse and last year claimed £20,000 in expenses.
Critics have said it is wrong to enjoy such largesse when student fees have risen again to £9,250 a year and staff wages have been stagnant.
Lord Adonis said: ‘Right to the very end, she is milking the University of Bath for everything she can.
‘The arrangements for her departure are scandalous and demonstrate the underlying problem of greed and lack of governance at Bath University.
‘It is absolutely unacceptable that the vice chancellor should be paid for six months for doing nothing after her retirement.
‘She should leave immediately and not hang around for another nine months during which the university will be able to make no reforms and do nothing to restore its reputation.’
Dame Glynis will step down as vice chancellor at the end of next August and ‘further her academic research’ during her sabbatical, the university said.
She will move out of her university-funded home for her sabbatical and formally retire in February 2019 in a deal agreed by the council of trustees.
The higher education funding watchdog HEFCE has previously criticised Bath over its handling of complaints over her pay. It also emerged two weeks ago that Dame Glynis was given a pay rise of £18,000 this year, taking her salary to £468,000.
Last week she narrowly survived a no confidence vote by the university’s senate. There have been student protests and four MPs quit a university advisory board over the scandal.
In a statement, Dame Glynis said: ‘I have served the university to the best of my ability and will continue to do so until the day I leave office. Since 2001, the university has changed dramatically. It has almost tripled in size and is now among the top universities in the UK.’ Tory MP Andrew Murrison, one of those who quit the advisory board, said: ‘The decision is the correct one. It had the whiff of inevitability about it but I am pleased nevertheless. ‘I hope the structure that is put in place at Bath University going forward is independent and capable of exercising restraint in remuneration of the senior leadership team.’ Sally Hunt, general secretary of the University and College Union of lecturers, said: ‘ The vice chancellor’s position had become untenable.
‘This whole episode has shone an important light on the murky world of senior pay in our universities and it would be wrong to think a change at the top of one institution solves that problem.’
‘There must be much more transparency surrounding senior pay and perks.’
University staff call on fatcat chief to resign From Thursday’s Mail
Students ‘ being put off by vice chancellor’s £450,000 deal’ November 3
Vice chancellor faces pay probe August 17
MP quits post over Bath chief ’s £450k August 12