A report released by the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts last month attacked the increasing income of Russell Group academics, of whom Oxford’s Vice Chancellor, Andrew Hamilton, received the highest income in 2011, £424,000. This sum is closely followed by the Vice Chancellor at University of Birmingham’s salary of £419,000 and the Vice Chancellor of University College London, who received £365,000 last year. These accounts show that Russell Group universities have spent an average of around £318,000 on Vice Chancellors’ salaries, benefits and pensions over the last year.
A report released by the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts last month attacked the increasing income of Russell Group academics, of whom Oxford’s Vice Chancellor, Andrew Hamilton, received the highest income in 2011, £424,000. This sum is closely followed by the Vice Chancellor at University of Birmingham’s salary of £419,000 and the Vice Chancellor of University College London, who received £365,000 last year.
These accounts show that Russell Group universities have spent an average of around £318,000 on Vice Chancellors’ salaries, benefits and pensions over the last year.The NCAFC report was written by Edward Bauer, a student and Vice-President of Education at Birmingham University, in collaboration with Michael Chessum, member of NUS and organizer for NCAFC; it also expresses concern at the rate at which these incomes are increasing.
According to the report, the income of the Vice Chancellors of the University College London and University of Birmingham increased by £27, 345 and £27,000 respectively between 2010 and 2011, whilst the Vice Chancellor of Nottingham followed with an increase of £9,057 over the past year. These figures are supported by each university’s annual finances report.
This report also reveals that the rise is not limited to Vice Chancellors, alledging that there has been an increasing amount of universitys’ incomes spent on jobs paid a salary of over £100,000 a year. It claims that the percentage of the Russell Group’s total income that was spent on high paid jobs has increased by over 2%, from 1.832% in 2003/2004 to 3.849% in 2011/2012.
Furthermore, this increase is not limited to the Russell Group. A Telegraph report claimed that more than 950 university staff, including Vice Chancellors, were paid more than the Prime Minister in 2010 and that last year Liverpool Hope University announced intentions to cut up to 110 jobs whilst increasing Vice-Chancellor Gerald Pillay’s salary by 20.6% to £199,077.
With the total cuts to universities for 2012/2013 standing at around 3.4% and the typical teaching academic being paid £42,263 on average, Bauer’s and Chessum’s ‘University High Pay Report: One Alternative to Cuts’ states, “it is worrying that UK universities are now spending 2% more on increasing the wages of their very richest employees”. This claim is supported by the Times Higher Education survey and by university financial statements. Analysis of these statements, conducted by accountancy firm Grant Thornton, shows that whilst total income packages dropped by by 1.21% in 2009-2010, the average spending by universities on salaries in isolation rose by 0.6%. A government-commissioned review of public-sector pay by the Work Foundation discovered that the pay-gap between the highest and lowest paid staff was greatest within the higher education sector.
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Students have expressed concern at these increases when education in the UK is facing stringent cuts this year. According to the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), core teaching funding is being reduced from £3.6bn in 2011/2012 to £2.4bn in 2012/2013 (a 34% decrease). And, despite the counteractive action of raising tuition fees, recent statistics show that the number of available courses over the past six years has been reduced by 27% and there will be around 11,000 fewer places for first year undergraduates available at universities next year.
Emma Wilson-Black, a second year student at Mansfield College, said, “At a time of cuts and austerity I would consider it deeply wrong and socially divisive to pay Russell Group university VCs massive salaries. I consider lecturers crucial to the education system rather than the few individuals at the top of the system who gain ridiculously inflated salaries.”She continued, “The government is already facing criticism that its ‘education reforms’ will create a two-tier system where poorer students find it even harder to access top universities. This presents a vision of education where elitism dominates.”
The Times survey of Vice Chancellors across the UK also revealed that 26% of VC’s went to state schools, 39% to grammars and 20% to private schools (there was no data available on the remaining percentage). However, amongst the chancellors of the Russell-Group, 35% were private-schooled, in contrast with only 7% of privately schooled Vice Chancellors in the Million+ research intensive institutions, (Million+ is a ‘think-tank’ of post-1992 institutions, formerly known as the Campaign for Mainstream Universities.)
Somerville student and president of the Oxford Socialist Worker Student Society, Fraser Anderson, agreed with Wilson-Black. He said, “Revelations about the increases in Vice Chancellors’ salaries at a time of unprecedented attacks on higher education are yet another confirmation that we’re not all in it together. This is what Stefan Collini called the ‘world of McKinsey’, where education policy is shaped by people like former BP boss, Lord Browne, and the chief of McKinsey’s Global Education Practice, Sir Michael Barber. In their world it’s huge salaries for top executives – higher fees and cuts to jobs, pay and libraries for the rest of us.”
However, not all Vice Chancellors pay packets have experienced an increase. For instance, the London School of Economics reduced their Vice Chancellor’s pay by £67,000 between 2010 and 2011 to £218,000 a year whilst Sheffield reduced their Vice Chancellor’s salary by £17,000 to £294,000 per annum. One student commented, “I think its important to remember that whilst education is facing cuts, the Russell Group contains some of the best universities in the world. Places like Oxbridge still manage to compete globally despite the huge financial advantages that institutions such as the Ivy League can offer students.”
He added, “I believe that the money within higher education should be more evenly spread between the VC’s and the average academic staff member if the University wishes to attract a larger proportion of high-calibre teachers. What’s the point in competitively paying for brilliant leadership if we can only afford to pay competively for a moderate workforce?”
Oxford University said that the pay for the Vice Chancellor reflected the calibre of the University itself. A spokesperson said, “It is certainly one of the two best universities in the UK and among the handful of best universities in the world.”She added that the influence of Oxford on the UK also accounts for the high salary. She stated, “It makes a major contribution to the economic prosperity of the UK and the UK’s position in the world, as well as to tackling global challenges through its research. Its research output is vast, it has an almost billion-pound-a-year turnover not including the colleges and OUP, and it has great institutional complexity. Its Vice Chancellor’s salary reflects that.”
