Latest news with #vicechancellor
The Australian
3 days ago
- Business
- The Australian
Australia's highest-paid vice-chancellors' salaries and pay packets ranked
University of Sydney vice-chancellor Mark Scott. Jane Dempster/The Australian You can now listen to The Australian's articles. Give us your feedback. You can now listen to The Australian's articles. Mark Scott has a money problem and it is not finding the time to spend the $1.33m he was paid to be vice-chancellor of the University of Sydney last year. It's the perception that his pay packet encourages, and it is the same for university leaders across the country. As a class, V-Cs look opulent, out of touch and indifferent to public opinion. For institutions that still rely on public funding this is a big problem. Anthony Albanese is not about to 'Trump' the oldest and richest Australian universities, but if he did hit – like Harvard has been hit in the US – universities in Sydney and Melbourne would be light on for community support. Tasmanian senator Jacquie Lambie gets this. She introduced a bill in the previous parliament to cap V-C pay at the $435,000 the commonwealth Treasurer makes. There were 400-plus reader comments sent to The Australian on Natasha Bita's Friday coverage of the 10 NSW public universities' annual reports, and what V-Cs were paid kept coming up. Other V-Cs should be pleased Scott was top of the pay pops – his $150,000 pay rise is a sure-fire ire attractor. Not all had huge hikes. University of NSW V-C Attila Brungs made only $700 more on 2023, leaving him to subsist on $1.15m. But in 2024, every V-C in the state made more than the Prime Minister's $607,000 base pay. The University Chancellors Council ignores the comparison to Albanese's wage in its submission to the Senate committee that was considering Lambie's bill, instead offering unconvincing justifications for why the V-C pay packets they approve should not be capped. They argued, 'caps fail to account for university size and complexity'. But the way university councils set V-C pay do not either. Last year, Deborah Terry was paid $1.158m to run the huge and complex University of Queensland, which had $2.83bn in revenue. Up the road, Helen Bartlett received $935,000 to lead the University of the Sunshine Coast, a challenger brand with $435m in income. Plus, the chancellors claimed that setting ceilings on pay would discourage global top talent. The problem is Australia already pays a premium. The president of Harvard University had a total package of $US1.5m last year but will take a 25 per cent pay cut next month due to tough Trump times. According to the QS global university rankings, Harvard is consistently in the world's top-five institutions, while the University of Sydney was 61st this year. University of Queensland vice-chancellor Deborah Terry. Picture: John Gass/NCA NewsWire The chancellors add that they were already on to pay, working on remuneration codes, but they know the jig is up. 'We are committed to restoring public trust and engagement with our universities,' their submission states. It is so far lost that Education Minister Jason Clare has a committee working on improving university management, including executive pay. So lost that V-C income is now a proxy for community distrust of university leaderships. They could all collectively cut their pay by half and stay on the hook of public suspicion. There are five reasons it came to this. One is apparent management indifference to student welfare, especially for victims of sexual harassment and assault that attracted so much community attention that Clare set up a national ombudsman to assist victims when university managements apparently would not. It is not just students who need help. Last week the Australian National University released a scathing report on decades of nepotism, bullying and ill-treatment of staff as well as students. Another is the underpayment of staff at universities across the country, mainly, but not always due to incompetence. The Fair Work Ombudsman has intervened repeatedly, including in the courts, to ensure universities pay people correctly. It still has a matter involving the University of NSW, which mentions in its annual report a $78m provision for current employees that includes underpayments. A third is the apparent inability of some universities – notably the universities of Sydney and Melbourne – to protect Jewish students, indeed some staff, from harassment during Gaza protests last year. There is also the failure of universities to assure the community that they are not ignoring the interests of local students by enrolling enormous numbers of internationals. The University of Sydney earned $1.6bn in international student fees in 2024 – 40 per cent of total revenue. Last year, 46 per cent of University of Melbourne students were from overseas. Both of them, and many more universities, need to do a way better job at explaining the real benefits of international education for the country. At the height of the phony argument during the election that internationals were to blame for housing costs, university lobbies complained about the revenue they would lose from enrolment caps. Then there is the way we perceive universities. For decades, V-Cs pitched them as a national resource, but now they can appear as giant corporations, focused on their own, not community interests. V-Cs with huge pay packets and grand digs do not help. The University of Melbourne bought a $7.1m Parkville mansion that former V-C Duncan Maskell lived in (it is now for sale). One of the reasons Scott is noticed for his plutocratic pay is Maskell, the previous top earner, has left. The University of Melbourne does not name the staffer who received a total package worth between $1,575,000 and $1,589,999, which suggests embarrassment at the size of the pay packet. 'I don't strike many people who are horrified by success, whether it's in business or on the sporting field or in the arts,' said economist (and assistant Treasury Minister) Andrew Leigh recently on the Joe Walker policy podcast. 'But in terms of Australian egalitarianism, I think there is that notion that being successful doesn't cause us to put you up on a pedestal. We are a country that doesn't stand up when the Prime Minister enters the room.' We certainly don't give V-Cs standing ovations, and won't while universities don't protect their staff and students and appear aloof to the way they are seen in the community. Big pay packets, regardless of apparent performance, will ensure we stay seated. Certainly, universities publish key performance indicators, but they are generally aspirational. Scott is not going to get sacked if staff and student responses decline on his university's surveys of satisfaction. But if the V-Cs are serious about 'restoring public trust and engagement' this year could be the last of ever-increasing pay for V-Cs, and their senior staff. Clare's committee could firmly suggest V-Cs link pay to public key performance indicators that cover what universities are supposed to do for students. Scores at faculty level on the national satisfaction surveys, lower attrition rates, a major – strike that – huge investment in new courses and teaching technology, would be a start, and competitive information on smaller classes would be a winner. Leigh is right, Australians don't object to rewards for success but it has to be earned and seen to be.
The Guardian
13-05-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Five vice-chancellors in Victoria paid more than $1m in 2024, prompting claims of ‘largesse'
Just three of Victoria's vice-chancellors took pay cuts last year despite growing outside pressure to address 'broken' university governance and accusations of 'executive largesse'. The universities' latest annual reports, tabled in state parliament on Tuesday, showed six of Victoria's nine vice-chancellors increased their pay or left it unchanged last year compared with 2023. Sign up for Guardian Australia's breaking news email Five were paid more than $1m annually, none higher than the University of Melbourne's Duncan Maskell, whose salary hit $1.5m in 2024 before his retirement this year. Maskell's pay was reduced to $1.4m in 2023 amid an operating deficit of $71m. Last year, the university recorded a larger deficit of $99m, the report revealed. A spokesperson for the university said the main reason for the remuneration increase was annual leave entitlements, paid on completion of the contract. The president of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU), Dr Alison Barnes, said despite 'years of community outrage', Victoria's chancellors were continuing to sign off on 'even more executive largesse'. A November report by the NTEU found 306 senior executives were earning more than the premiers of their university's state, at an average of six per institution. 'On one hand, universities blame budget deficits for job cuts, and with the other they push vice-chancellor pay into the stratosphere,' she said. 'Add these insulting pay bumps to the sky-high pile of evidence showing university governance is completely broken.' The education minister, Jason Clare, has previously flagged that the Universities Accord, handed down last year, 'made clear' that university governance needed to be strengthened and workplace relations compliance improved in the tertiary sector. The largest pay bump went to Swinburne University's Prof Pascale Quester, who received a $130,000 annual increase to a total salary of $1.1m. Deakin University ($1m), Victoria University ($850,000) and Federation University ($910,000) also increased the pay of their vice-chancellors by $50,000, $10,000 and $20,000 respectively. RMIT's vice-chancellor's pay remained unchanged at about $1m. Overall, six universities were in the red in 2024 and three posted a surplus – including Swinburne ($28.1m), Victoria University ($66.1m) and RMIT ($1.8m), however overall deficits largely improved on 2023. A spokesperson for Victoria University said the vice-chancellor, Prof Adam Shoemaker, had received his first increase, in alignment with public sector benchmarks, since his appointment in 2021. Shoemaker said 2024 had been a 'remarkably successful year for VU, but our work continues in the context of the University Accord'. Sign up to Breaking News Australia Get the most important news as it breaks after newsletter promotion A Federation University spokesperson said the vice-chancellor's $910,000 salary was set independently by the University Council and benchmarked against other sectors and peer institutions. They said under Prof Duncan Bentley's leadership, the university had dramatically reduced student attrition, grown domestic student numbers by 15% and improved in its rankings and equity performance. A Swinburne spokesperson said its surplus would be reinvested in 'even better facilities, technology and campus upgrades, and ensuring our financial sustainability'. The vice-chancellor of the University of Divinity, Prof James McLaren, took a pay cut of about $40,000, paid $210,000 to $219,999 annually amid a $289,000 deficit, the reports showed, as did La Trobe University's vice-chancellor, Prof Theo Farrell. Farrell, who commenced the role last year, earned between $860,000 and $869,999 in 2024, $100,000 less than the previous vice-chancellor. The salary of Monash University's vice-chancellor was reduced from $1.5m to $1.1m. A Monash University spokesperson said the reduction was principally due to the departure of the previous vice-chancellor. Excluding philanthropic funds, donations and investment income, Monash University's underlying result was a $6m deficit, an improvement on its $123.5m deficit in 2023.
