Cash keeps rolling in for vice-chancellors heading pension scheme

SOME of the highest paid vice-chancellors in the country are pocketing thousands of pounds from a university pension scheme that is billions of pounds in deficit.

Dame Glynis Breakwell, outgoing vice-chancellor of Bath University, received £50,000 last year as chairman of the Universities Superannuation Scheme’s (USS) policy committee. Her salary of £468,000 makes her the best paid university chief in the country. She retires in August with a £265,000 “golden handshake”.

Sir David Eastwood, the vice-chancellor of Birmingham University, whose salary is £439,000, was paid £90,000 as chairman of the pension fund.

Although it has a £7.5 billion deficit, the fund is one of the largest principal private pension schemes for universities and other higher education institutions. Universities UK, the vicechancellor membership body, has recommended ending the defined benefit scheme, which would cut payments to staff in their retirement. The University and College Union (UCU) is currently balloting its members for industrial action over the proposed changes.

It comes amid widespread condemnation of vice-chancellor pay packets. Jo Johnson, the universities minister, has spoken out against the salaries and said any member of a university’s senior leadership team with a salary above £150,000 should justify it to a new regulator, the Office for Students (OFS), or face a fine.

Dame Glynis announced her retirement last month after facing calls to resign from her own staff as well as from Lord Adonis, the former education minister. Sir Anton Muscatelli, the principal of the University of Glasgow, is paid £35,000 to sit on the pension board. A spokesman from the university told Times Higher Education that Sir Anton donates his fee to the university as “he thinks it is the right thing to do”.

However, Dame Glynis has said she has “always chosen not to publicise the nature, scale or object of my philanthropy”. But a UCU spokesman accused “well-remunerated” vice-chancellors of “pulling the ladder up on their staff ” at a time when proposed reforms threatened to slash members’ pensions.

The USS annual company report for 2017 revealed that the remuneration of its 12 directors totalled £731,000, up from £591,000 the previous year.

A USS spokesman said that vicechancellors sitting on the board “have personal responsibilities to fulfil as directors of the trustee company that are distinct from their other roles”.

£7.5 bn Deficit of the Universities Superannuation Scheme. Dame Glynis Breakwell sits as the chairman of the scheme’s policy committee