The University and College Union (UCU) today published their figures on vice chancellors’ pay in a report titled Transparency at the top? This comes as part of the union’s ongoing campaign for ‘greater transparency at the top of UK universities’.
The report finds that the average salary for a UK vice chancellor is £260,000 with the top earner being Professor Neil Gorman of Nottingham Trent University, who took home £623,000 in 2013/14 according to the union. Gorman also benefitted from the largest percentage pay increase between 2012/13 and 2013/14 with a rise in pay of 70.2%.
Other high earners listed in the report are Professor Malcolm Gillies of London Metropolitan with an emolument of £454,000, Professor Andrew Hamilton of the University of Oxford with £442,000, Professor Sir Andrew Likierman of London Business School with £419,000 and Martin Bean of The Open University with £412,000.
The report states that 18 vice chancellors had salary increases of more than 10% pointing out that this comes at a time when university staff had to take industrial action to secure a 2% raise. Professor Neil Gorman of Nottingham Trent University had the largest pay increase with his salary rising from £366,000 to £623,000 between 2012/13 and 2013/14. Professor Malcolm Gillies of London Metropolitan University had the second percentage pay increase of 53.6%. Professor Graham Galbraith of the University of Portsmouth, Professor Jonathan Freeman-Attwood of the Royal Academy of Music and Professor Dame Julia Goodfellow of the University of Kent had the 3rd, 4th and 5th largest percentage pay increases of 19.8%, 18.0% and 16.2% respectively.
The report also looked into vice chancellors’ expenses and travel costs finding that, during 2013/14, the average spend on air fares for vice chancellors was £9,705.75 and 68% of flights were in first or business class. £3,202.05 was the average spend on hotel accommodation and the average spend on expenses was £3,112.61.
UCU report that the largest flight expenditure for 2013/14 was from Professor Craig Calhoun of the London School of Economics, with an expenditure of £59,811.14. 99.6% of which was spent on business and first class flights. Professor Pamela Gillies of Glasgow Caledonian University had the largest hotel accommodation expenditure in 2013/14 totalling £27,271.12.
The top five expenses claimants in 2013/14, according to UCU, were Professor Gavin Henderson of the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama with £33,526, Ian Diamond of the University of Aberdeen with £23,910.29, Professor Simon Gaskell of Queen Mary University London with £22,703.2, Professor Martin Hall of the University of Salford with £22,592.06, and Professor Paul Layzell of Royal Holloway, University of London with £18,287.47.
24 of 155 institutions refused to respond to UCU’s FOI requests or used exemptions and therefore did not release the information the union asked for.
UCU general secretary Sally Hunt, said: ‘What has been most striking is the huge variation in universities’ responses to our requests for information. Too many institutions refused to provide any information on expenses and the majority showed a strong determination to keep the details of decisions on senior pay a closely-guarded secret. Even where minutes of the committee tasked with setting senior pay were supplied they were often redacted to the point where they were rendered meaningless.”
Download the report here.
What is even more amazing is that Sally Hunt, with little formal education and trivial prior work-experience relative to the academics she represents, receives more nearly triple the average salary of a UK academic.