The bloated salaries that have put the vice into vice-chancellors

SIR – Professor Louise Richardson, Vice-chancellor of Oxford university (Comment, September 5), defends vice-chancellors’ high salaries by saying that they are low-paid compared with footballers and bankers.

Someone on her salary should come up with a better argument than that. By the same reasoning, one could say they are high-paid compared with the Prime Minister or train drivers.

The problem with high pay in these jobs where there is little competition is the closed shop. Although the role is one of administration and leadership, entry is narrowly restricted to a small group of mostly academics.

There are only 129 vice-chancellors in the United Kingdom. It beggars belief that many people with suitable skills cannot be easily found. If vice-chancellor vacancies were opened up to bankers or to leaders in industry and the professions, they’d find more well-qualified candidates without needing to pay so much. Julian Gall

Godalming, Surrey SIR – It is not surprising that people accuse academics of being detached from reality when they come across the sort of comments made by Professor Louise Richardson.

Contrary to her assertions, UK vice-chancellors are not “operating in a global marketplace”. If they were so good, then they would be employed by the (typically) US organisations they like to use as the justification for their excessive remuneration.

In both academic and commercial worlds, a phrase such as “global marketplace” is trotted out to cover people’s embarrassment at earning more than they can justify by their performance.

Using the tired examples of “bankers and footballers” to suggest that these senior academics’ salaries are low is adding insult to injury. There is much to dislike in the reward systems of bankers and footballers, but they are both subject to competitive pressures and job insecurity that academics could not begin to understand from the comfort of their grace-and-favour homes and enhanced pensions.

Not only MPS consider the coincidence of high vice-chancellors’ salaries and increased university fees to be more than just an accident of timing. Anyone with common sense would have the same concerns. Robin Humphreys

Exmouth, Devon

SIR – Footballers’ pay is entirely dependent on results. Their career can end in seconds. Louise Richardson’s career is secure – win, lose or draw – and underpinned by an overgenerous publicly funded final-salary pension. Salary and pension are partly paid out of the tripling of student tuition fees.

It takes the fees of 40 students just to pay her salary. Steve Kemp-king

Brentford, Middlesex

SIR – What does a vice-chancellor actually do for £451,000 a year? Peter Ralph

St Arvans, Monmouthshire