End ‘witch-hunt’ against v-cs over high pay, says report

Hepi author warns of ‘dangerous’ pressure to reduce leaders’ salaries in reaction to attention from the media and politicians

August 31, 2023
John Morgan
Performers stage a Chinese version of The Crucible to illustrate End ‘witch-hunt’ against v-cs over high pay, says report
Source: Alamy

Universities better articulating the “scale and complexity” of a vice-chancellor’s role could help to check the “witch-hunts” leaders face over their pay from politicians and the media, according to the author of a new report.

Negative coverage of vice-chancellors’ salaries had the potential to put pressure on university governing bodies and remuneration committees to reduce leaders’ salaries, said Lucy Haire, director of partnerships at the Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) and author of its report Because you’re worth it: are vice-chancellors worth the pay they get?

“I think that’s dangerous, because we’ve got a global market now in executive leadership in higher education. And we’ve got a series of challenges in UK higher education that need addressing; we need the very best to do that,” she told Times Higher Education.

In the face of a debate in which vice-chancellors’ pay is “often scapegoated by politicians and the media”, the report argues that it should be acknowledged that “universities are high-revenue organisations, receiving up to £2.2 billion annually, and have enormous local, national and international influence, so high-quality leadership is essential”; that leaders’ pay “is not a Wild West, but determined carefully by remuneration committees”; and that the three best-rewarded UK leaders earn “more than the UK prime minister and managers in the NHS, but less than institutional leaders of private sector companies with similar revenue”.

Looking at July 2022 figures, the report lists the three universities whose leaders enjoyed the highest pay and benefits: Imperial College London (Alice Gast, £714,000), the University of Oxford (Dame Louise Richardson, £542,000) and the London School of Economics (Baroness Shafik, £539,000). All three of those leaders have since moved on from their posts.

Among the report’s recommendations are that the sector should “redouble efforts to ensure a better awareness of the scope, scale and complexity of higher education leaders’ roles such that the negative rhetoric about high pay is dialled down and the witch-hunts cease”.

It also says the sector should “strengthen the capability of institutional governing bodies through training and advice to set and review head of institutions’ remuneration”, including “good practices such as appointing staff, student and expert representatives to all university remuneration committees”.

There should also be changes to the Committee of University Chairs’ Higher Education Senior Staff Remuneration Code “to be more flexible and daring to ensure it helps universities to attract the best”, with an aim to “cauterise the assumption that a very well-compensated leader is at odds with higher education sector values and missions”, the report argues.

Ms Haire said the report came about after she was “taken aback by the wide range of people who attack vice-chancellors”, which “felt at odds” with her personal experience of working with “pretty impressive” university leaders through her role at Hepi.

Is it right to make the comparison between the pay of vice-chancellors and leaders in the private sector, when most would expect an ethos of public service from the former?

Vice-chancellors have “a foot in both camps”, said Ms Haire. They lead institutions that “have a public sector feel, so they have a public service duty”, but they “are much more like CEOs these days as well as academic leaders”, she added.

Given the requirement to manage £1 billion-plus in annual income at some institutions and the need to generate revenue in competitive markets such as student recruitment, “that comparison with CEOs isn’t misplaced if you look at what they [vice-chancellors] have to do”, she continued.

john.morgan@timeshighereducation.com

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Reader's comments (11)

#1 Submitted by kjk on August 31, 2023 - 7:36am
But anybody who works in HE and does understand what they do knows they aren't worth it. Generic strategies, vanity projects ,bonuses for nothing, nepotism and no accountability for failure or lack of achievement would be a better summary. I think this report will damage HEPI and the author's credibility, particularly being published during a cost of living crisis and ongoing pay dispute within the sector.
#2 Submitted by DocStock on August 31, 2023 - 8:34am
Can we end the use of the term "witch-hunt" to refer to demands for accountability targeted (in large part) at wealthy, powerful, white men from privileged backgrounds?
#3 Submitted by cynicus academicus on August 31, 2023 - 8:45am
I did an analysis ages ago (https://modern-cynic.org/2013/05/08/university-leaders/) that was covered quite extensively by the THE and others. I argued that UK VCs were paid pretty much in line with global market norms for public institutions (it is the Australian VCs who are massively overpaid). However, the logic above assumes that those in these roles are competent up to the standards required (a debatable point but not one that receives any real discussion or data -- except for work by Amanda Goodall). In addition, the argument made here assumes that somehow your ordinary academic (e.g., lecturers and post docs make less than a trainee train driver working for a UK railway) is not subject to the same logic. In my field, a starting Assistant Professor in the US at leading schools (e.g., the top 25% of universities) recieves a 9-Month salary (topped up by summer support) in the range of US$150K to $300K (I work in a business school). Yet the leading UK schools (with the exception of LBS) pays £50K-£60K for 12 months. The average salary of all academics in all fields at places like MIT, Princeton, etc. is on the order of US$225K for 9 months. As I always say, if you want to play in the Premier League you have to pay Premier League salaries (or offer effectively equivalent contracts). However, the UK is basically playing in Championship football while talking as if they are in the Premier League.
#4 Submitted by HJMiller on August 31, 2023 - 9:28am
Can't remember who said it but there's a quote to the effect that globalisation justifies paying top bosses more (as competition in a global market for CEOs/ 'talent' etc), but also paying workers less (as more competition for cheap, casualised jobs or these can be automated/ offshored etc). Your point illustrates this or at least how the logic of global market is not consistently applied to increase salaries for ordinary academics.
#5 Submitted by HJMiller on August 31, 2023 - 9:26am
The 'global market' argument is taken from financial services, and I'm not sure it applies to universities which are public institutions or charities. This is why the comparison with private sector companies that is made is completely specious. I think there are a number of reasons why VC pay (and that of other senior managers) is a lightning rod for criticism within the sector from those outside the gilded circle of HEPI, THES conferences etc. 1. Like in the financial services/ banking there seems to be no penalty or financial consequence for failure. Rather failures in policy or operation seem to be no barrier to moving on to another lucratively paid job. 2. The amount that VCs and other managers get paid is so removed from the lived experience of many academics and professional support staff working now - precarity, declining pensions, endless bureacracy, torn by multiple pressures. This is why the pay issue grates so much, and it is also why senior managers seem to be so out of touch with the reality of working in a university in the current time.
#6 Submitted by david palfreyman on August 31, 2023 - 10:16am
With luck the egregious excessive pay levels for VCs are dropping back as RemCos are now required to write a letter of justification for such to the OfS - and it is simply not possible to concoct an intellectually credible evidence-based justification for paying any VC above £350k. If VCs and their legions of Management helpers were at all competent we would, for example, not have had the massive degree-grade inflation of the past decade nor the over-recruitment of students in recent years that obliges first-years to live 40 miles away from the University they thought they were attending. And the image/reputation of HE would not be as tarnished as it now increasingly is in the USA, UK, and Australia.
#7 Submitted by HJMiller on August 31, 2023 - 10:39am
To its credit HEPI have published a good riposte by Jo Grady (UCU) to their piece, and she makes many excellent points. https://www.hepi.ac.uk/2023/08/31/jo-grady-of-ucu-responds-to-hepi-report-on-vice-chancellors-pay/
#8 Submitted by marysyngecharitylaw on August 31, 2023 - 11:12am
"[VCs] lead institutions that 'have a public sector feel, so they have a public service duty...'” Certainly for the many universities which are registered or exempt charities, it might be better to concentrate on the 'charity feel' - and the legal duty to act in the way that most effectively advances the charitable purpose (eg advancing education and research for the benefit of the public). Setting and justifying executive remuneration in light of this duty and the charitable context - rather than against the context of global business - is what is expected of large charities, so why not universities? Adopting the terminology and behaviours (including pay packets) of large business, without at the same time adopting the reporting restrictions and accountability mechanisms that exist there (including shareholders' rights to remove directors, bring derivative actions, or have binding/non-binding votes on remuneration policies) makes parallels with CEOs in the private sphere less convincing. Sector guidance encourages such behaviours. Recognising the charitable status of universities, and understanding and acting upon the legal consequences of that status (on the part of both universities and government), offers a viable - and legal - alternative to current practices and matters of governance, including in respect of VC remuneration (as explained in 'The University-Charity: Challenging Perceptions in Higher Education'). www.universitycharity.co.uk
#9 Submitted by A_demotivated_academic on September 1, 2023 - 11:55am
From HEPI website https://www.hepi.ac.uk/about-us/working-with-hepi/university-partnership/ "For further information on how to join the HEPI University Partnership Programme please contact Lucy Haire, Partnerships and Fundraising Manager"
#10 Submitted by smlake61_hotmail_com on September 3, 2023 - 12:56am
It's quite stunning how the starting point of the defence of this practice is so far taken for granted that it isn't even questioned, namely, that we should even have corporate leadership of any public service provider or agency in the first place. We have merely normalised it and then forgotten that we ever did things differently, and, perhaps, better. Universities - and this is far more of an Anglo-Saxon thing today, although it wasn't always, than it is a European or global practice - it's therefore very culturally contingent, not an absolute - as academic communities should be led not by corporate managers with no specific competence or qualification or experience as academics, but by academics, elected by their own communities, who alone are competent to make decisions affecting the quality & standards of the education they provide. Corporate managers have different priorities that are simply not compatible in practice with best pedagogy, and certainly not when they are cutting academic employment and positions and, consequently, what their institutions can even teach o train expertise in, because they are more focussed on profit for themselves than appropriately remunerating the professionals who actually deliver the services. Casualised academic employment is not compatible with providing the best quality & standards of tertiary education or with optimal teacher-student ratios s essential for good student "experiences" (as other things also are). You need full-time continuing employed lecturers who are career academics, working in the most favourable and conducive environments possible, not toxic pressure cookers more obsessed with paperwork than with ideas and knowledge, and if you are constantly reducing that, then you are in effect destroying th nations entire higher education system, including its qualification of all of the professionals whom our society then depends upon - beginning with our doctors, who are clearly no longer getting the quality of education was expect them to have. Business practice is not compatible with good education, but is rather its nemesis. That's ironic, when employers - part of the same business environment as university managers - demand that graduates should have knowledge and skills that their universities aren't providing them with. It is far from clear why managers should be paid exorbitant salaries while a majority of equally or even more highly expert academics can't even earn enough to pay the rent and put food on the table, often have to work several universities, or why incentivisation should work in one direction but not the other. True, there are no doubt multiple other motivations behind these attacks, and it isn't by chance that they increased during the pandemic after going unnoticed for more than 20 years. But there are nonetheless some very fundamental questions that should be being asked about all of this, which are NOT being asked at all, to judge from this article.
#11 Submitted by smlake61_hotmail_com on September 3, 2023 - 12:56am
It's quite stunning how the starting point of the defence of this practice is so far taken for granted that it isn't even questioned, namely, that we should even have corporate leadership of any public service provider or agency in the first place. We have merely normalised it and then forgotten that we ever did things differently, and, perhaps, better. Universities - and this is far more of an Anglo-Saxon thing today, although it wasn't always, than it is a European or global practice - it's therefore very culturally contingent, not an absolute - as academic communities should be led not by corporate managers with no specific competence or qualification or experience as academics, but by academics, elected by their own communities, who alone are competent to make decisions affecting the quality & standards of the education they provide. Corporate managers have different priorities that are simply not compatible in practice with best pedagogy, and certainly not when they are cutting academic employment and positions and, consequently, what their institutions can even teach o train expertise in, because they are more focussed on profit for themselves than appropriately remunerating the professionals who actually deliver the services. Casualised academic employment is not compatible with providing the best quality & standards of tertiary education or with optimal teacher-student ratios s essential for good student "experiences" (as other things also are). You need full-time continuing employed lecturers who are career academics, working in the most favourable and conducive environments possible, not toxic pressure cookers more obsessed with paperwork than with ideas and knowledge, and if you are constantly reducing that, then you are in effect destroying th nations entire higher education system, including its qualification of all of the professionals whom our society then depends upon - beginning with our doctors, who are clearly no longer getting the quality of education was expect them to have. Business practice is not compatible with good education, but is rather its nemesis. That's ironic, when employers - part of the same business environment as university managers - demand that graduates should have knowledge and skills that their universities aren't providing them with. It is far from clear why managers should be paid exorbitant salaries while a majority of equally or even more highly expert academics can't even earn enough to pay the rent and put food on the table, often have to work several universities, or why incentivisation should work in one direction but not the other. True, there are no doubt multiple other motivations behind these attacks, and it isn't by chance that they increased during the pandemic after going unnoticed for more than 20 years. But there are nonetheless some very fundamental questions that should be being asked about all of this, which are NOT being asked at all, to judge from this article.

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