Minister to focus ‘laser-like’ on top salaries
THE UNIVERSITIES Minister has vowed to “focus laser-like” on the issue of vice-chancellors’ pay as the row over top salaries continues.
Sam Gyimah said he wants to see vice-chancellors kicked off remuneration committees to prevent them having a hand in setting their own pay.
Speaking to the Commons Education Committee yesterday, Mr Gyimah said: “What happened before was that vice-chancellors sat on the remuneration committee and they would obviously recuse themselves when their own pay was being discussed.
“But even in FTSE 100 companies you can’t sit on a remuneration panel and say ‘I wasn’t in the room so it’s nothing to do with me’”
Vice-chancellor pay has come under scrutiny over the past year, with recent research revealing the average remuneration is £268,103 in salary, bonuses and benefits.
Mr Gyimah said the Office for Students (OFS) planned to force universities to publish the number of staff earning a basic salary of more than £100,000.
Education institutions would also have to publish full details of total remuneration packages, along with the full job title of anyone earning more than £150,000.
He added: “But it’s not just transparency in terms of sharing the numbers. We want to see a justification for the total remuneration package for the head of the provider and the provider’s most senior staff, so they’ve got to explain why that person deserves that pay package.”
In November, Dame Glynis Breakwell resigned as vice-chancellor of the University of Bath after it emerged she earned £475,000 in salary and benefits last year. Strikes hit 65 universities in recent months in a bitter dispute over pensions, while most students now pay top-rate tuition fees of more than £9,000 a year. More than 1,000 students have joined a class-action lawsuit seeking compensation for the disruption, which could cost universities millions.
Mr Gyimah said he was committed to ensuring students had all the information needed to help them decide if they were receiving value for money.
HUNDREDS OF college lecturers are set to walk out of classes next month as a dispute escalates over “deeply damaging” plans to cut jobs and courses at a Yorkshire college.
University and College Union members at the Hull College Group, including about 400 lecturers, will go on strike at sites in the city, Harrogate and Goole on May 9, 17 and 18.
It is set to be followed by further walk-outs as Unison, which represents mainly support and administrative staff, said a separate ballot for industrial action would open tomorrow.
It comes after protests in Hull and Harrogate over the last fortnight at plans to cut 231 full-time equivalent (FTE) posts – about a third of staff – across the group’s three campuses.
The Government has given the college an “eight-figure” “Fresh Start” grant to allow for the restructure, which had run up a £10m deficit over four years.
UCU said staff – 79 per cent of whom backed strike action in the vote – felt there was “no alternative”.
Regional official Julie Kelley said they wanted the college to halt the cuts and provide a “transparent” review of the decisions behind them.
She said students in higher education, who are paying £7,500 in fees and are now faced with 50 per cent cuts in core hours, are voting with their feet.
“In the BA Honours Degree Course in Dance we understand there is only one student returning to do their final year,” she said.
Ms Kelley said they had heard some schools were advising year 11 students that it may be “too risky” to go to Hull College, adding: “That is bad news for Hull College and not good for the longevity of anything.
“This narrative that we haven’t any other way out other than making 231 FTE staff redundant has been so damaging.
“It has been completely counter-productive to the reputation of the college.”
Unison area organiser Paul Swarbrick said staff felt “very let down” and there were examples of roles which are being cut from four people to one.
He said: “Members have said that is impossible, never mind the stress it will cause.
“We have asked again for them to take a second look and basically they are telling us they can’t, they have agreed this bail-out and this is how they are going to get to this place.”
The college said the majority of its 1,200 staff had not voted for strike action and it would not solve the group’s financial and operational issues.