University pay

SIR – The high salaries paid to university vice-chancellors should not be confused with the salaries paid to the academics who actually do the work that universities are designed for – the lecturers, readers and professors who teach and research.

Even the word academic is misleading because much of the work done is of a highly practical nature. How some of our young lecturers manage to exist on their poor salaries is beyond me – even on a professorial salary, it would be very difficult to buy a house and have a family.

When I was a young academic some 50 years ago, I was able to buy a house and run a small car, though money was tight. In those days vice-chancellors would have had a salary twice that of a professor; now it seems to be more like a factor of five.

If academic salaries were brought up to a level matching their talents and in line with comparable professions such as medicine and the law, they should rise by at least 50 per cent. Emeritus Professor MMR Williams Eastbourne, East Sussex

SIR – The news that Oxford students are protesting against comments by the vice-chancellor is unsurprising (report, September 5). It is only the latest example of the culture of intimidation present within universities – and in particular within student unions – to conform to progressive received opinions on social and political matters.

In recent years, Oxford and Cambridge have benefited from emulating the fund-raising success of American universities while avoiding the damage from the dulling intellectual authoritarianism of the “control-left”. As the latter now crosses the Atlantic, it poses an existential threat to our universities far more serious than the mere scale of vice-chancellors’ salaries.

Prior to the reforms of the 1850s, Oxford was, in effect, a seminary for the Established Church. It is in danger of resuming that role as a madrasa for Guardianistas. Joseph Conlon

Professor of Theoretical Physics New College, Oxford