Outrage as university chiefs’ pay hits £290k
A TYPICAL pay package for a university boss is now worth almost £300,000 a year, analysis of official figures has found.
UK vice-chancellors saw their salaries rise to £268,000 on average last year – and with pension contributions taken into account, the average rose to £289,756
And four higher education leaders shared nearly £1million between them in payouts as they retired or stepped down.
The latest remuneration survey by Times Higher Education comes amid growing concerns about spiralling pay for university bosses.
It shows vice-chancellors received an average of £268,103 in salary, bonuses and benefits in 2016/17. This is up 3.9 per cent compared with 2015/16.
A total of 13 institutions paid more than £400,000 for the office of the vicechancellor in 2016/17, while 64 paid more than £300,000.
Subsidised
The figures may be skewed by a number of large payouts handed to leaders that were leaving office.
The institution paying the largest amount to its vice-chancellor was Bath Spa University where Professor Christina Slade, who served as its head until August last year, was paid £808,000, including £429,000 as “compensation for loss of office”.
Last night John O’Connell, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “Ideally, universities would be independent from Government and vice-chancellors’ pay would not be a political issue. But when so much of universities funding comes from taxpayers in the form of direct grants and heavily subsidised loans, action is needed.
“Universities must be more accountable to taxpayers if they are to continue to exist in their present form.”
A Universities UK spokeswoman said: “The Committee of University Chairs’ new remuneration code, currently being consulted upon, will provide important guidance for university remuneration committees to ensure senior pay decisions are fair, accountable and justified, while recognising that competitive pay is necessary to attract first rate leaders.”
WHAT on earth is going on in this country’s universities? As a generation of undergraduates becomes ever more deeply mired in debt, the people who actually run the institutions seem to have equally firmly wedged their snouts into the trough. It is absolutely extraordinary that typical pay for a vice chancellor is now nearing £300,000 and almost unbelievable that 13 of their number are now earning more than £400,000 a year.
This has got to stop. There is no conceivable justification for pay on this scale, indeed it is ironic that as standards in some places of learning are going down, pay is soaring. Gargantuan salaries do not sit well in such a field, nor do they provide much impetus for vice chancellors to try to solve the increasingly urgent issue of student debt. Indeed they would almost appear to have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.
Something has gone badly wrong with the university system in this country. Too many students are taking too many worthless degrees.
Meanwhile, administrators are pocketing a small fortune for managing a system that sometimes resembles nothing so much as a ponzi scheme.
The Prime Minister has signalled that there must be root and branch reform of other parts of the university system. To that must be added the salary of vice chancellors.