Vice-chancellor admits role’s effect is ‘limited’
THE country’s highest paid vice-chancellor co-wrote a report suggesting that university leaders have little impact on how well their institution performs.
This week Jo Johnson, the universities and science minister, said that all vicechancellors who earn more than £150,000 will have to “justify” their salary, or risk being fined by the regulator.
Dame Glynis Breakwell, who earns £451,000 as vicechancellor of Bath University, co-authored an academic paper which found that the characteristics of vice-chancellors have “limited impact” on their institution’s performance.
The paper examined the socio-demographic traits of vice-chancellors, including age, gender, ethnicity, and educational and employment background.
The paper concluded: “Whilst the performance of a university may be ‘moulded’ by the characteristics of its leader, most of the variability in university performance is explained by non-leadership factors”.
The paper, titled “University leaders and university performance in the United Kingdom: is it ‘who’ leads, or ‘where’ they lead that matters most”, was published in 2010.
Prof Breakwell told The Daily Telegraph: “This paper found that factors such as the age and gender of leaders in higher education have a limited relationship with the performance of those institutions… where the vice-chancellor is making a difference to institutional performance, it is likely to be the result of personal characteristics such as experience, knowledge, personality or interpersonal skills, not demographic traits.”
Joe Rayment, a Labour councillor in Bath who has campaigned for years against excessive vice-chancellor pay, said it was “high time” that Prof Breakwell resigned.
“This research confirms what staff and students already knew, which is that success doesn’t come from the top, but comes from the hard work of everyone at a university,” he said.