Rein in academic pay

One group of public sector workers for whom austerity is a dirty word is university vicechancellors. Professor Louise Richardson, of the University of Oxford, this week denounced politicians and the media as “mendacious and tawdry” for accusing institutions of using rising fees to subsidise inflated pay. Prof Richardson’s salary is £350,000 but she implied that she could earn more in America, where eight principals receive more than £2m. In a newspaper interview yesterday, Janet Beer (salary £340,000), head of Universities UK, said top universities are hiring in an “internationalised market” and need to pay well in order to compete with institutions abroad.

The average salary among vice-chancellors is £280,000. In addition to this substantial sum, they enjoy virtual security of tenure, grace-and-favour residences and the generous pensions that are available to all in the public sector but few in the private. Their salaries are set by remuneration committees whose members are invariably also in the public sector.

Like bankers, the vice-chancellors are feeling beleaguered. They have been piqued by suggestions that many of their institutions charge too much in fees for poor teaching, an accusation given credence by the fact that they almost all levy the same maximum allowable amount, whatever their standards.

Lord Adonis, the former Labour minister, has accused the universities of acting as a cartel to slow reforms and freeze out private sector competition. Certainly as student debt mounts up, the salaries of vice-chancellors rise with it. They are worried that Jo Johnson, the Higher Education Minister, is going to rein them in. It is about time he did.