Damehood for vice chancellor who defended bumper wages

AN OUTSPOKEN universities’ leader, who has led the defence of large pay packets for vice chancellors, received a damehood for services to higher education and equality.

In September, Prof Janet Beer, the vice chancellor of Liverpool University and the head of Universities UK, described the attacks on soaring vice chancellor pay as “hysterical” and a series of “minor squalls” in an interview.

Dame Janet, who is paid £340,000 a year, said the controversy did not compare with protests over the trebling of student fees in 2012.

She told the Financial Times: “Every time I hear somebody overstating the case, [saying] ‘Oh, there’s a crisis… I think there are things that could be improved, but aren’t there always?”

The Cabinet Office said that Dame Janet, a former vice chancellor at Oxford Brookes University, had made an “exceptional contribution to higher education”.

Other vice chancellors rewarded in the honours include a CBE for Prof Joy Carter, the head of the University of Winchester, who in 2013 was criticised for accepting a 13 per cent rise, taking her pay to more than £222,000 a year.

In other honours, David Leakey, the outgoing holder of the Black Rod parliamentary post, has been made a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order by the Queen.