The Emperor Has No Answers: Vice Chancellor Peter Mathieson’s Pay Farce

The question every Vice Chancellor dreads is: How much do you get paid? A textbook case in what not to do is given by Sir Peter Mathieson, the Principal and Vice Chancellor of Edinburgh University.

He was devoured alive by the Holyrood Education Committee convenor, Douglas Ross MSP, as reported gleefully in the press here and here.

Now, the 21 Group believes that sometimes a high salary can be warranted, if an individual is unusually talented. The problem with high pay for Vice Chancellors is that most of the individuals seem to be superlative only in their mediocrity. Sir Peter had little defence against the onslaught beyond incoherently mumbling, “I don’t know my exact salary“.

Why does this matter? After all, the high pay of Vice Chancellors and their entourage cannot close the funding gap for UK universities.

It matters for two reasons.

The first problem with high Vice Chancellor pay is optics. 

UK Universities are not in the public sector, but they rely on politicians to dispense public money for research and teaching. Optics matters in politics. Stories about lavish pay, first-class air travel & luxury hotels are incredibly damaging to the public perception. They feed a narrative of waste and profligacy.

“Universities were the darlings of the left .. ‘They’re hopeless’, one Labour insider said before the election. In eyes of many, they lost the plot on excessive vice chancellor pay & perks, .. “ [From Anthony Seldon, himself a former Vice Chancellor]

Many in Universities were surprised by the incoming Labour Government’s tough stance, which Anthony Seldon’s quote helps explain. The Education Minister has also used similarly brutal and uncompromising language about financial accountability in her remarks about Universities.

Adapting to the changed context of the HE sector over the next decade will require providers to undertake a more fundamental re-examination of business models and much less wasteful spending. In return for the increased investment we are asking students to make in the sector, we will need to see far greater collaboration across the sector to drive efficiency. We will expect the sector to be significantly more transparent on how it is managing its resources and to be held to account for delivering great value for money for students and the taxpayer.(Baroness Smith of Malvern, 18th November 2024)

Since taking power in July 2024, the Labour Government has added over £1 billion in costs to the higher education sector, according to UniversitiesUk.

High pay for senior management has toxified relations with the Government. The Government and the public blame a vain, financialised, swindling managerial overclass for the sate of Universities. This may not be fair, but that’s how politics works.

The second reason is that the yawning gap between Vice Chancellor pay and the rest of us has created a ‘them’ and ‘us’ world in Universities. No longer are we are self-governing community of scholars, students and teachers. Now we are a largely subservient workforce directed by a highly-paid cadre of administrators with the Vice Chancellor at the apex.

Relationships between members of the University fifteen years ago were more communal in structure. When I was hired as a lecturer in 2000, my Head of Department said to me ‘We’re all paid basically the same here“. It was not fully true, but it captured the more egalitarian spirit in Universities then.

Once individuals are earning several hundred thousand pounds a year more than the rest of us, they begin to behave as though they are worth it. Communications from the senior management (the Vice Chancellor, the Pro-VCs, the Registrar, the HR Director) to academics are now characterised by arrogance and haughtiness.

Do you not know who we are? How dare you criticise what ‘the University’ has decided.

It is typical for such highly paid individuals to refer to themselves as ‘the University’. In truth the University is all of us.

Academics no longer feel in control of their working environment, as decisions that shape our professional lives are increasingly made elsewhere. The university’s central administration has become the primary source of directives, often issued without consultation. It is within this central authority that key policies are formulated, setting the agenda for departments and individuals alike. Power has shifted decisively to the centre, where it is concentrated and exercised with growing intensity.

Academics feel disempowered and distanced from the governance of their own institutions. The high pay of VCs and their entourage is a very visible sign of this.