{"id":1393,"date":"2025-02-01T23:08:09","date_gmt":"2025-02-01T23:08:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/?p=1393"},"modified":"2025-02-02T07:39:41","modified_gmt":"2025-02-02T07:39:41","slug":"opportunities-lets-make-lots-of-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/?p=1393","title":{"rendered":"Opportunities (Let&#8217;s Make Lots of Money)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Pet Shop Boys - Opportunities (Let&#039;s Make Lots of Money) (Version 2) (HD)\" width=\"750\" height=\"563\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/PyeWRd7ZEBs?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Vice Chancellors, Pro-Vice Chancellors and Registrars make lots of money. Universities justify their huge salaries as needed to &#8220;<em>attract top executive talent<\/em>&#8220;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The median Vice Chancellor pay of the Russell Group for 2023-2024 is \u00a3400,000, as reported by the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.timeshighereducation.com\/news\/average-russell-group-vice-chancellor-pay-package-hits-ps400000\">Times Higher Education Supplement<\/a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p><em>&#8220;The largest individual total remuneration went to Deborah Prentice at the University of Cambridge.<\/em> <em>Her remuneration package of \u00a3577,000 for her first full year as vice-chancellor included a&nbsp;base salary of&nbsp;\u00a3409,000, along with \u00a342,486 in relation to relocation expenses, \u00a329,177 in accommodation, utilities and property taxes, and personal travel costs of&nbsp;\u00a322,564&#8243;.<\/em> [From Times Higher Education Supplement]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>In addition to their pay, Vice Chancellors normally get lavish \u2018grace and favour\u2019 accommodation. For example, in the case of Cambridge University, the Vice Chancellor occupies a \u00a34.5 million lodge. The university covers all cost of utilities, council tax, maintenance, and pension contributions for the accommodation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In principle, there is nothing wrong with offering high pay to attract very gifted individuals.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Paula Vennells was on a salary of \u00a3619,000 to run the Post Office. If she had possessed the acuity to diagnose the problems of the Post Office and fix them she would have been well worth the money. Instead she had little ability or insight. Rather than \u201c<em>top executive talent\u201d<\/em>, she was very dim. The costs of her disastrous tenure at the helm of the Post Office are now expected to exceed \u00a31 billion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Of course, it is not just Vice Chancellors. Many other members of the senior management team, such as Registrars, pro Vice Chancellors, Chief Finance Officers and HR Directors, are on very substantial salaries.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Numbers &amp; costs of actual professors have stayed pretty much the same over last 5 years. However, the \u201cprofessionalisation\u201d of universities has resulted in bloated &amp; unaccountable administration overheads. In numbers &amp; costs, these are now a big cause of the operating deficits reported by many universities &amp; hence the crisis in UK Higher Education.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For example, the top 12 senior managers at\u00a0 Cardiff University collectively &#8216;earned&#8217; \u00a32.5 million in 2023. Below the top 12 will be many tens of administrators earning > \u00a3100k. This all adds up to a significant portion of the operating deficit which is being used to cut <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/cy08v7jxr20o\">400 academic jobs.<\/a> as announced this week<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Are university senior managers worth it? Given the way these &#8216;talented&#8217; people are running UK universities, it looks like a serious case of <em>Vennells Derangement Syndrome<\/em>. Many are dim and almost all have goofed up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, there is another problem with huge Vice Chancellor pay, which is special to Universities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>&#8220;<em>Universities were the darlings of the left .. \u2018They\u2019re hopeless\u2019, one Labour insider said before the election. In&nbsp;eyes of many, they&nbsp;lost the plot on excessive vice chancellor pay &amp; perks<\/em>, .. \u201c <em>[From <a href=\"https:\/\/www.spectator.co.uk\/article\/can-our-universities-be-saved\/\">Anthony Seldon<\/a>, himself a former Vice Chancellor<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>The problem with high Vice Chancellor pay is optics.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Optics matters in politics. Stories about lavish pay, pricey air travel &amp; 5 star hotels feed a narrative of waste and profligacy. UK Universities are not in the public sector, but they rely on public money for research and teaching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Let us remember the nearest Tony Blair came to Parliamentary defeat was not over the Iraq War. It was over tuition fees. The 2004 Parliamentary vote which hiked tuition fees to \u00a33,000 per year was won by just 5 votes. Subsequently, the Liberal Democratic Party committed electoral suicide in another unpopular tuition fee rise to \u00a39,000. Tuition fee increases are disliked by the electorate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, no politician is going to take an electoral beating for wealthy Vice Chancellors &amp; their entourages, many of whom are on salaries two or three times greater than that of the Prime Minister. It was absolutely no surprise that the Budget failed to deliver any substantial tuition fee rise at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What our elected MPs should be doing is holding university leadership to account. University Vice Chancellors should be hauled before a Parliamentary Select Committee. Let them answer to MPs about their management of the sector. Let them justify their massive wages to MPs. Let them explain the scandals over bullying and financial mismanagement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The crisis in UK Higher Education still has a long way to go. It\u2019s rising to a crescendo in 2026. And the 21 Group expects some of our University Vice Chancellors\u00a0will have to appear before Parliament for a grilling by then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, probably best not to be too conspicuous in the VC pay tables &#8230; or involved in several huge cover-ups.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Vice Chancellors, Pro-Vice Chancellors and Registrars make lots of money. Universities justify their huge salaries as needed to &#8220;attract top executive talent&#8220;. The median Vice Chancellor pay of the Russell Group for 2023-2024 is \u00a3400,000, as reported by the Times Higher Education Supplement.&nbsp;&nbsp; &#8220;The largest individual total remuneration went to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1393"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1393\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1417,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1393\/revisions\/1417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}