The Times Higher Education v-c pay survey 2018

Our annual pay review details v-cs’ remuneration, explores the make-up and workings of the governing bodies that set it, and compares the rewards on offer with those of other sectors

February 22, 2018
V-c calculator
Source: Illustrations by Miles Cole

View the full results of the Times Higher Education v-c pay survey 2018 or search our interactive table below


Outrage over the high pay of UK university leaders has surfaced several times in recent years, but it has normally fizzled out quickly.

Not this past year. Since Lord Adonis, the former Labour education minister, began tweeting about the “greed” of some “grossly overpaid” vice-chancellors last summer, the topic has scarcely been out of the headlines. Within a few days, the issue of “excessive vice-chancellors’ pay” became a cause célèbre, with Jo Johnson, who was then universities and science minister, joining the chorus of disapproval from across the political divide.

Adonis’ principal target was Dame Glynis Breakwell, vice-chancellor of the University of Bath and the UK’s highest-earning university leader in 2015-16, whose pay package including pension contributions totalled £451,000. But Johnson chose to single out Sir Christopher Snowden, vice-chancellor of the University of Southampton, who earned £352,000 in 10 months in 2015-16, including pension. The minister claimed that Snowden’s salary was an example of the “endless upwards ratchet of vice-chancellors’ pay”.

Times Higher Education’s survey of vice-chancellors’ pay in the most recently reported financial year, 2016-17, reveals that Snowden’s total remuneration rose to £433,000 in 2016-17, while that of Breakwell – who announced last November that she would retire at the end of the current academic year – reached £471,000, a rise of 4.4 per cent. But even that salary looked paltry compared with the headline-grabbing £808,000 earned by Christina Slade of neighbouring Bath Spa University, a figure that – as THE revealed in December – included a £429,000 pay-off for “loss of office”.

THE’s survey – the first sector-wide analysis of UK university leaders’ pay in 2016-17 – reveals that vice-chancellors were paid an average of £268,103 in salary, bonuses and benefits. This was £10,180 more than in 2015-16, amounting to a rise of 3.9 per cent. Once employer pension contributions are included, vice-chancellors received a total pay package of £289,756 on average, a rise of 3.2 per cent. Some 13 universities paid their leaders a total of more than £400,000 in 2016-17, while 64 paid more than £300,000.


Vice-chancellor pay by university

 

Click on each column to sort or use search box to find an institution
UniversityTotal excluding pension 2016-17 (£)% change from 2015-16Total including pension 2016-17 (£)% change from 2015-16
*There was more than one vice-chancellor employed at this institution in 2016-17, which may skew the figures.
**Further notes exist about remuneration at this institution in 2016-17, please see the full PDF version of the table for more information.

As THE revealed in December, Michael Farthing, the former vice-chancellor of the University of Sussex, received a £230,000 pay‑off “in lieu of notice” during his final month of office, which the university said “fulfilled our contractual obligations to him”. And THE ’s survey reveals other significant pay-offs for departing vice-chancellors that have not been previously reported. For instance, Cliff Allan, head of Birmingham City University for four years until his sudden exit in October 2016, was paid £186,876 as “compensation for loss of office” on top of the £33,301 salary he was paid between August and October that year, the university’s accounts show. With the cost of two interim vice-chancellors to cover the remainder of the year, Birmingham City’s total layout on its top office amounted to £413,398, including employer pension contributions – compared with £271,464 in 2015-16. The university, which said in October 2016 that Allan’s exit was for “personal reasons”, told THE that its former leader “received compensation in line with the terms of his contract”.

Meanwhile, Calie Pistorius, who stepped down as vice-chancellor of the University of Hull in January 2017, was paid £74,000 “in connection with his retirement from office”. It meant that the South African academic, who had led the university since 2009, was paid salary and benefits of £223,000 in the six months up to his retirement, while also receiving £22,000 in employer pension contributions. With his successor, Glenn Burgess, earning a further £204,000 in pay and pensions that academic year, it took Hull’s cost of office to £449,000: almost 50 per cent higher than in 2015-16.

The university says that Pistorius had remained in post for six months after announcing his retirement in July 2016, during which he “took a three-month sabbatical to develop mutual research interests before returning to the university for a handover period. During the period of transition and sabbatical, the deputy vice-chancellor [Burgess] assumed the position of acting vice-chancellor…ensuring that any extra costs associated with this interim appointment were marginal.”

Despite the headlines they make, such pay‑offs do not actually distort average salaries very much. If those universities that had a change of leadership in 2015-16 or in 2016‑17 are excluded from calculations, average pay remains very similar: £268,291, or £289,259 if pension contributions are also counted.

Golden handshake

 

Nevertheless, these exit arrangements for long-standing university leaders remain under close scrutiny. Particular eyebrows have been raised by the six-month sabbatical granted to Breakwell following her retirement after 17 years in office. For Adonis and other critics, the cost of the sabbatical – £230,000 – is a symptom of a system of university governance that has become disconnected not just from ordinary university staff, who are seething over yet another below-inflation pay rise (1.1 per cent in 2016-17) and are now striking over pensions cuts, but also from students angry about the £50,000-plus debts that many will rack up before graduation.

“Bath is an interesting case because we have never been seen as having a hugely political students’ union, but many students became quite angry about Dame Glynis’ pay because we are paying more than ever to go to university,” explains Eve Alcock, a final-year psychology student at Bath. “But if you stepped back, this was really about a failure of governance – high pay was just a symptom of it.”

Alcock, who chairs the university’s charity fundraising body RAG, began to take an interest in governance and submitted a Freedom of Information request asking for the names and positions of Bath governors since 2000. She admits that, on one level, her request yielded no bombshell revelations: all standing orders were followed and a predictable list of figures from business, law and finance had enjoyed a seat around the boardroom table over the years. But the list was still revealing. For instance, Bath’s current chair of council, Thomas Sheppard, has held senior positions at Thrings, a UK top 100 law firm with offices in Bath; when he attended his first council meeting in January 2008, the university also had a pro-chancellor, Jeremy Thring, from the same law firm, who had been a member of council as far back as 1992. Alcock also found that Thring had been appointed deputy lieutenant of Somerset in the same year, 2010, as Breakwell received the same honour (the university’s treasurer, Peter Wyman, was appointed in 2014).

Other appointments also suggest that “Bath’s senior management, and people of influence who sit on council, all seem to move in the same sorts of circles”, says Alcock, who believes that students need to ask questions about who is making decisions about their university.

“Why exactly are we getting people from big business to become so involved in institutions that are really about education,” she says, adding that the recent appointments of HSBC and Boots executives to the board of the Office for Students raises the same question.

According to Michael Carley, president of Bath’s branch of the University and College Union, this similarity in governors’ background and the long duration of Breakwell’s tenure gave rise to a “collective consciousness” among board members that led to “complacency”.

Instead of using their standing within industry to challenge senior management, lay governors tended to toe the executive’s line, says Carley. “In my time on the university council, I never saw it stop the vice-chancellor from doing what she wanted to do,” he explains. Business people in particular “come from a particular kind of organisation that thinks the chief executive is the head [and] so should influence every decision – they transfer their authority to the boss”. So any challenge came from governors from other sectors – mostly academic staff.

Such dysfunction set the scene for an acrimonious university court meeting in February 2017, in which a motion censuring the remuneration committee for allowing Breakwell’s salary to escalate was narrowly defeated by 33 votes to 30. A critical report by the Higher Education Funding Council for England, published in November, found that the vote would have passed if several members of court with “conflicts of interest” had been forced to withdraw. However, the report also revealed that no formal procedures for such withdrawals had ever been drawn up.

“Even the formal governance processes were not being respected,” Carley adds.

Bath committed to a review of its governance in advance of the Hefce report. Minutes of this year’s court meeting – which, unlike previous years, were published promptly – show a contrite Sheppard admitting that last year’s “difficult and unsatisfactory meeting…was poorly handled”, that the “voting process was flawed” and that standing orders to handle conflicts should have been in place.

Centrered around money

 

The level of student interest in Bath’s governance may seem unusual, but it is perhaps indicative of a growing interest in how power more widely is wielded and how managers are chosen and held to account. In 2017, for instance, questions were asked about how a charity could spend £46 million of public money on London’s abortive Garden Bridge without a brick being laid. More recently, there has been incredulity about how the UK’s biggest construction company, Carillion, could collapse with debts of £1.5 billion a year when auditors had signed off its accounts.

Students are right to challenge the make-up of their university governing bodies, argues Michael Shattock, visiting professor at the UCL Institute of Education, who has interviewed almost 100 representatives from all levels of higher education for a forthcoming book on university governance.

Shattock, a former registrar at the University of Warwick, says that universities have created a “business model of governance packed with senior lay members from industry and finance” but with very few representatives of the rank-and-file academics who are more attuned to campus life. “My feeling is that it’s not working at the moment,” says Shattock. While he remains a “great admirer of what lay members bring to university boards”, namely their common sense and problem-solving nous, Shattock believes that the executive pay controversy has stemmed from their less admirable traits.

“There is a tendency to want to have a highly paid vice-chancellor because it shows what an important job I’m doing as a lay governor,” says Shattock, who also believes that the inexorable rise of university leaders’ salaries is, to some extent, caused by laziness. “Governors do not want to go through the hassle of appointing a new vice-chancellor, so they make sure they give [the existing one] a little more each year,” he says, citing Bath as the prime example.

Moreover, even the most astute governors can find themselves taking an overly rosy view of a university leader’s performance if their contact is limited to presentations from the senior team five or six times a year, Shattock adds: “When governors are so distant, you lose the interplay between the academic community and the lay members that we used to get.”

But other observers are wary of losing the considerable time and experience that business leaders give, usually unpaid, to university governance.

“I’m not being complacent when I say that there is no objective evidence to say that we need to rip up the governance book,” says Sir Eric Thomas, the former Universities UK president who retired as vice-chancellor of the University of Bristol in 2015, after 14 years in office. “There needs to be more transparency about how remuneration is fixed, but we shouldn’t mix up vice-chancellors’ pay with how universities are governed,” he adds.

Thomas, who is now a governor at University of the Arts London and a trustee at NMITE, the new engineering university planned for Hereford, says that the advice of lay governors was invaluable when he was at Bristol. “The art of the game is to get the best people and a good spread of skills – that might mean someone from a legal background, someone with HR skills, someone from the health service and someone from finance and, perhaps, PR. You certainly need one or two people with knowledge of running a business as they understand the level of designation used by a vice-chancellor,” Thomas says, in reference to the challenge of managing Bristol’s 6,000-strong workforce.

And he rejects the idea that university leaders like to “manage” their governing bodies by feeding them only information that is largely positive. “That is absolutely the wrong path to take,” says Thomas, who maintains that it is “absolutely essential for governors to know that you are telling them everything they need to know”. In Bristol’s case, his chairs in particular were very much in touch with everyday academic life, typically spending a day and a half a week “sitting down with me or talking to other people like the registrar or company secretary”.

Higher education would not have become one of the UK’s biggest strengths if it had been founded on poor governance, Thomas concludes.

However, others with skin in the game see room for much improvement. One example is Neil Goulden, chair of Nottingham Trent University’s board of governors, who believes that “things have gone a bit awry recently because people got a bit lazy about ensuring good governance – and that became an issue thanks to vice-chancellors’ pay”.

Calculating pay

 

New draft guidance on setting senior pay, published by the Committee for University Chairs in December, is “far too wishy-washy”, says Goulden, who is the former chief executive of betting firm Gala Coral Group and is now chairman of Clarion Housing Association, which manages 135,000 homes. “It is very self-justifying and needs to be much more prescriptive around excessive pay and transparency,” he says of the voluntary code. “It should not just suggest that a student or staff member should be on the remuneration committee – it should be embedded in the code,” he argues.

Goulden is no fan of the Office for Students’ proposal to require institutions to justify the salaries of all staff earning more than the £150,000 paid to the prime minister, calling that threshold “arbitrary” and inviting “pejorative and uninformed” comments on pay levels. However, he believes that more transparency is needed. “If you look at publicly quoted companies, they are disclosing 14-page reports into the details of their remuneration committees,” he says, comparing this with more sparse details currently published by universities.

But John Rushforth, executive secretary of the CUC, believes that the new code, which is now being consulted on, will substantially improve transparency. It will address concerns about vice-chancellors sitting on remuneration committees and exerting influence even if they have never been allowed to vote on decisions related to their own pay, he says. According to a recent UCU survey, only seven out of 91 universities surveyed confirmed that their vice-chancellor was neither on the committee that set senior pay nor permitted to attend meetings anyway (a practice that will be discouraged under the draft code).

But any requirement for students, for instance, to be on remuneration committees would not sit well with the CUC’s voluntary code, Rushforth insists. “You have to remember CUC is not a regulator – we have no powers of enforcement, so unless there is a very clear consensus on an issue, it is quite difficult to deliver,” he observes. Having spoken to representatives of students’ unions, he is also not sure that students want to sit on such boards, making largely technical assessments about pay: “I can see the argument for it helping transparency, but we are addressing this head‑on with the new code.”

The code’s proposal to require universities to provide particularly strong public justification for paying their vice-chancellors more than 8.5 times the median salary of their workforce has also been seen as too soft. With the median employee in higher education earning £37,643 in 2016, vice-chancellors would need to earn more than £323,000 to be affected by the rule. As noted by Michael Nisbet, a retired management consultant, in a submission to the House of Commons Education Committee’s current inquiry on value for money in higher education, only a dozen surpassed that threshold in 2015‑16. THE’s survey reveals that, in 2016‑17, the total cost of office passed that threshold at 31 UK universities, although four of those had changed their vice-chancellor in that year.

Rushforth disagrees, stating that the average pay multiple of 6.5 would be an instructive reference point for pay discussions. “It would affect every vice-chancellor because their university will have to decide whether they should be above or below this,” he says.

John Raftery, vice-chancellor of London Metropolitan University, welcomes the CUC’s new code and believes that the criticism of some vice-chancellors’ pay has gone too far, condemning the “selective singling-out of certain vice-chancellors for opprobrium”.

Raftery, whose pay package, including pension contributions, totalled £328,000 in 2016-17, up by 29 per cent on 2015-16, says that it is not unreasonable for those involved in a high-performing sector to receive fair remuneration. “If you were to recognise what the UK does successfully, you would probably mention design, music and higher education,” he explains. “Why has the government thrown so much negativity towards a high-performing sector? Why is there no mention that the head of the Harris Federation [a school academy chain] is paid £500,000?”

Governors should set the pay of vice-chancellors based on performance, he says, pointing to the improvements in student outcomes and financial stability that he has presided over at London Met since 2014. “Salaries should not be decided by the prestige of an institution, perhaps not even its size…but on the demands of the job and the change they bring about,” he says.

Mark Anderson, chair of London Met’s board, said that Raftery accepted a salary “below the median for the sector” when he joined in 2014, but the board agreed that “his pay should be linked to performance”. In light of the university’s “dramatic turnaround” under Raftery’s leadership – including overtaking 45 other universities on graduate employment outcomes – the remuneration committee “recommended [in late 2016] that his salary should be bought up to the median level for the sector in recognition of the impact he has had”.

But, whatever the rights and wrongs of individual pay awards, it seems that there is plenty more mileage in attacking vice-chancellors’ pay. Earlier this month, Adonis opened a new broadside on a visit to the University of Cambridge, calling its new vice-chancellor, Stephen Toope, “grossly overpaid” for his £365,000 pay packet, and lamenting the university’s involvement in a “culture of shameless greed”. Whether tweaks to governance, or even wholesale reform, can help alter this perception remains doubtful. 


Overpaid? That’s not how it looks from here

How vice-chancellors’ pay compares with that of other leaders in UK public, quasi-public and commercial organisations

How vice-chancellors’ pay compares with that of other leaders in UK public, quasi-public and commercial organisations

Data points for vice-chancellors’ salaries are marked in red and refer to median point in specified size category, where the figure refers to the number of employees 
Data compiled by Michael Nisbet. Vice-chancellors’ data are for 2015-16. Other salaries are taken from annual reports, mostly for 2016-17.


Should a vice-chancellor be paid more than the £150,000 earned by the prime minister? While this question is moot – all but Writtle University College, a specialist agricultural institution, paid their leader a larger sum in 2016-17 – it nonetheless continues to inform debate about senior pay in universities.

But there are many more public-sector employees earning much more than £150,000, says Michael Nisbet, an economist and retired management consultant who has researched senior pay across all sectors. Based on figures collected by the Office for National Statistics’ Annual Survey of Hours and ­Earnings, about one in 100 public-sector employees (some 43,000 in total) earns more than £113,000, while salaries in excess of £200,000 are not uncommon for chief executives regarded, like vice-chancellors, as being within the public or the not-for-profit sector, Nisbet says.

For instance, Jim O’Sullivan, chief executive of Highways England, received £336,868 in 2016‑17 for leading an organisation with about 4,400 staff – a workforce equivalent to a mid-sized university. In comparison, the median pay of vice-chancellors leading universities with 2,000 to 5,000 staff was £255,000 in 2015-16, Nisbet calculates.

That discrepancy is not a one-off: the UK’s five largest housing associations pay their chief executives a median salary of £358,000 a year for leading workforces that all number about 5,500 staff.

Someone leading a UK university with between 5,000 and 9,000 full-time staff – Russell Group universities employ about 7,000 staff on average – receives a median of £298,000 in pay, Nisbet calculates. Far smaller public-sector organisations pay their leaders larger amounts, he adds: for instance, the Civil Aviation Authority, with fewer than 1,000 staff, paid its chief executive, Andrew Haines, some £356,400 in 2016‑17, its latest accounts show.

A more realistic view of executive pay within both the public and private sectors is needed, Nisbet says. He calculates that about 20,000 people in the UK earned more than £320,000 last year – but only 14 vice-chancellors had salaries above this level in 2015‑16.

Overall, the median pay for university heads in 2016-17 was £261,289, or £287,000 when pension contributions are included.

So why the objections over university leaders’ pay? Nisbet believes that it is caused in part by a failure to recognise general salary inflation: “Someone forming their views on actual salaries in 1997 might note a top salary of £180,000,” he explains. “They may not have absorbed that that is the same [money] salary as £315,000 in 2017.”

Very few people understand the internal pay structures of organisations, where someone at a higher level of responsibility and accountability will typically earn 60 per cent more than the person immediately below them, Nisbet adds. With three or four levels of management above professors, who on average earn about £76,000, the pay and rewards soon shoot up, he observes.

“Another reason may be simple envy, which can be very destructive of individuals and societies,” he concludes.

Jack Grove


University

Vice-chancellor/chief executive

Basic salary 2016-17 (£)

Total including pension 2016‑17 (£)

University of Aberdeen

Sir Ian Diamond

277,000

327,000

Abertay University

Nigel Seaton

183,000

216,000

Aberystwyth University

John Grattan

103,000

157,000

Elizabeth Treasure (from 1 April 17)

73,000

75,000

Aberystwyth total

176,000

232,000

Anglia Ruskin University

Iain Martin

265,000

307,000

Arts University Bournemouth

Stuart Bartholomew

184,647

219,843

Aston University

Dame Julia King

70,000

110,863

Alec Cameron (from 1 Nov 16)

245,000

286,937

Aston total

315,000

397,800

Bangor University

John Hughes

248,000

253,000

University of Bath

Dame Glynis Breakwell

401,000

471,000

Bath Spa University

Christina Slade1~

679,000

808,000

University of Bedfordshire

Bill Rammell

234,000

269,000

Birkbeck, University of London

David Latchman

350,064

386,098

University of Birmingham

Sir David Eastwood2

436,000

439,000

Birmingham City University

Cliff Allan3

220,177

225,836

Graham Henderson ** (17 Oct-29 Nov 16)

41,372

41,474

Graham Upton **~ (from 30 Nov 16)

145,785

146,088

Birmingham City total

407,334

413,398

Bishop Grosseteste University

Peter Neil

158,222

191,668

Bournemouth University

John Vinney

249,000

304,000

University of Bradford

Brian Cantor

250,000

250,000

University of Brighton

Debra Humphris

237,585

237,585

University of Bristol

Hugh Brady

271,000

333,000

Brunel University London

Julia Buckingham

310,000

329,000

University of Buckingham

Sir Anthony Seldon***

191,268

191,268

Bucks New University

Rebecca Bunting

202,000

235,000

University of Cambridge

Sir Leszek Borysiewicz~

343,000

362,000

Canterbury Christ Church University

Rama Thirunamachandran

260,000

260,000

Cardiff University

Colin Riordan4

247,000

302,000

Cardiff Metropolitan University

Antony Chapman

17,313

20,920

Cara Aitchison (from 1 Oct 16)

183,333

227,820

Cardiff Metropolitan total

200,646

248,740

University of Central Lancashire

Mike Thomas

250,000

258,000

University of Chester

Tim Wheeler

271,000

273,000

University of Chichester

Clive Behagg

129,512

150,856

Jane Longmore (from 2 May 17)

40,652

47,351

Chichester total

170,164

198,207

City, University of London

Sir Paul Curran

309,000

390,000

Courtauld Institute of Art

Deborah Swallow

191,000

191,000

Coventry University

John Latham

269,394

314,966

Cranfield University

Sir Peter Gregson

286,000

364,000

University of Cumbria

Julie Mennell

181,980

211,935

De Montfort University

Dominic Shellard

286,000

331,000

University of Derby

Kathryn Mitchell

232,200

269,822

University of Dundee 

Sir Pete Downes

266,000

266,000

Durham University

Stuart Corbridge

286,000

302,000

University of East Anglia

David Richardson

240,000

291,000

University of East London

John Joughin

250,000

294,000

Edge Hill University

John Cater

333,000

343,000

University of Edinburgh

Sir Timothy O’Shea5~

277,000

321,000

Edinburgh Napier University

Andrea Nolan

196,000

226,000

University of Essex 

Anthony Forster

257,274

316,240

University of Exeter

Sir Steve Smith

315,000

424,000

Falmouth University

Anne Carlisle

231,000

309,000

University of Glasgow

Sir Anton Muscatelli

279,000

329,000

Glasgow Caledonian University

Pamela Gillies

226,000

263,000

Glasgow School of Art

Tom Inns

151,000

177,000

University of Gloucestershire

Stephen Marston

167,000

193,000

Goldsmiths, University of London

Patrick Loughrey

245,000

287,000

University of Greenwich

David Maguire

236,655

275,031

Guildhall School of Music and Drama

Lynne Williams

145,000

169,000

Harper Adams University

David Llewelyn

180,000

210,000

Heriot-Watt University

Richard Williams

265,000

285,000

University of Hertfordshire

Quintin McKellar

282,000

339,000

University of the Highlands and Islands

Clive Mulholland

211,000

232,000

University of Huddersfield

Bob Cryan

314,613

371,243

University of Hull

Calie Pistorius6 (up to Jan 17)

214,000

245,000

Glenn Burgess7**~

173,000

204,000

Hull total

387,000

449,000

Imperial College London

Alice Gast

355,000

433,000

Institute of Cancer Research

Paul Workman

269,000

269,000

Keele University

Trevor McMillan

253,000

267,000

University of Kent

Dame Julia Goodfellow~

299,000

324,000

King’s College London

Edward Byrne

350,000

425,000

Kingston University

Julius Weinberg

40,000

41,000

Steven Spier (from 3 Oct 16)

169,000

190,000

Kingston total

209,000

231,000

Lancaster University

Mark E. Smith

268,000

317,000

University of Leeds

Sir Alan Langlands

281,000

294,000

Leeds Arts University

Simone Wonnacott

165,000

186,000

Leeds Beckett University

Peter Slee

222,000

259,000

Leeds Trinity University

Margaret House

170,115

193,328

University of Leicester

Paul Boyle

278,000

288,000

University of Lincoln

Mary Stuart

251,000

291,000

University of Liverpool

Dame Janet Beer

266,900

363,300

Liverpool Hope University

Gerald Pillay

264,723

313,875

Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts

Mark Featherstone-Witty

171,578

171,578

Liverpool John Moores University

Nigel Weatherill

285,446

287,797

Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine

Janet Hemingway

303,000

309,000

University of London

Sir Adrian Smith

175,307

175,307

London Business School

Sir Andrew Likierman~

445,000

458,000

London Metropolitan University

John Raftery

259,000

328,000

London School of Economics and Political Science

Craig Calhoun

26,000

31,000

Julia Black**~ (from 1 Sep 16)

259,000

278,000

LSE total

285,000

309,000

London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

Peter Piot

327,000

379,000

London South Bank University

David Phoenix

258,000

288,000

Loughborough University

Robert Allison

240,000

283,200

University of Manchester

Dame Nancy Rothwell

260,000

306,000

Manchester Metropolitan University

Malcolm Press

288,000

333,000

Middlesex University

Tim Blackman

260,000

318,000

Newcastle University

Chris Brink

104,100

138,000

Chris Day (from 2 Jan 17)

171,700

218,100

Newcastle total

275,800

356,100

Newman University

Peter Lutzeier

68,004

79,211

Scott Davidson (from 1 Jan 17)

94,500

110,074

Newman total

162,504

189,285

University of Northampton

Nick Petford

192,000

254,000

Northumbria University

Andrew Wathey

264,000

309,000

Norwich University of the Arts

John Last

177,310

178,955

University of Nottingham

Sir David Greenaway~

295,000

381,000

Nottingham Trent University

Edward Peck

250,000

319,000

The Open University

Peter Horrocks

345,000

360,000

University of Oxford 

Louise Richardson

354,000

430,000

Oxford Brookes University

Alistair Fitt

233,300

238,199

Plymouth Marjon University

Cara Aitchison

37,000

38,000

Karen Cook** (from 1 Oct 16)

67,000

79,000

Rob Warner (from 1 Mar 17)

70,000

80,000

Plymouth Marjon total

174,000

197,000

Plymouth University

Judith Petts

240,648

273,294

University of Portsmouth 

Graham Galbraith

266,000

305,000

Queen Margaret University

Petra Wend

210,000

247,000

Queen Mary University of London

Simon Gaskell~

275,000

290,783

Queen’s University Belfast

Patrick Johnston^

236,000

295,000

James McElnay (from 16 June 17)

25,000

32,000

Queen’s total

261,000

327,000

Ravensbourne

Linda Drew

140,425

163,567

University of Reading

Sir David Bell

260,383

307,252

Regent’s University London

Aldwyn Cooper

254,000

279,000

Robert Gordon University

Ferdinand von Prondzynski

235,742

278,436

University of Roehampton

Paul O’Prey

262,000

312,000

Rose Bruford College

Michael Earley

149,890

177,781

Royal Academy of Music

Jonathan Freeman-Attwood

210,721

214,746

Royal Agricultural University

Chris Gaskell

14,167

14,167

Joanna Price (from 1 Sept 16)

140,426

173,799

Royal Agricultural total

154,593

187,966

Royal Central School of Speech and Drama

Gavin Henderson

176,727

208,140

Royal College of Art

Paul Thompson

225,000

275,427

Royal College of Music

Colin Lawson

237,518

243,218

Royal Conservatoire of Scotland

Jeffrey Sharkey

138,000

165,000

Royal Holloway, University of London

Paul Layzell

301,000

313,000

Royal Northern College of Music

Linda Merrick

137,000

161,000

Royal Veterinary College

Stuart Reid

307,420

354,057

University of St Andrews

Garry Taylor**

11,000

11,000

Sally Mapstone (from 1 Sept 16)

220,000

250,000

St Andrews total

231,000

261,000

St George’s, University of London

Jenny Higham8

276,000

276,000

St Mary’s University, Twickenham

Francis Campbell

169,000

195,000

University of Salford

Helen Marshall

204,000

217,000

University of Sheffield

Sir Keith Burnett

389,289

426,589

Sheffield Hallam University

Chris Husbands9

240,000

298,000

Soas, University of London

Baroness Amos

229,967

271,361

University of South Wales

Julie Lydon

225,000

228,000

University of Southampton

Sir Christopher Snowden

423,000

433,000

Southampton Solent University

Graham Baldwin

213,514

259,261

SRUC (Scotland’s Rural College)*

Janet Swadling**

48,000

57,000

Wayne Powell (from 1 July 16)

152,000

177,000

SRUC total

200,000

234,000

Staffordshire University

Liz Barnes

198,000

233,000

University of Stirling

Gerard McCormac

269,000

276,000

University of Strathclyde 

Jim McDonald

299,000

366,000

University of Suffolk

Richard Lister

144,000

187,000

University of Sunderland

Shirley Atkinson

202,000

239,000

University of Surrey

Max Lu

310,000

366,000

University of Sussex

Michael Farthing10

249,000

252,000

Adam Tickell (from 1 Sep 16)

267,000

293,000

Sussex total

516,000

545,000

Swansea University

Richard Davies

247,000

254,000

Teesside University

Paul Croney

212,310

292,028

Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance

Anthony Bowne

177,530

206,787

UCL

Michael Arthur

365,208

372,825

University of Ulster

Paddy Nixon

260,000

311,000

University of the Arts London

Nigel Carrington

265,364

265,485

University College Birmingham

Ray Linforth

245,000

245,000

University for the Creative Arts

Simon Ofield-Kerr

79,440

92,250

Alan Cooke** (from 1 Jan 17)

52,515

62,390

Bashir Makhoul (from 5 June 17)

16,827

19,600

UCA total

148,782

174,240

University of Wales Trinity St David

Medwin Hughes11

223,000

279,000

University of Warwick

Stuart Croft

283,000

332,000

University of West London

Peter John

271,000

297,000

University of the West of Scotland

Craig Mahoney

223,000

262,000

University of the West of England

Steve West

254,120

326,012

University of Westminster

Geoffrey Petts

296,000

301,000

University of Winchester

Joy Carter

215,520

261,289

University of Wolverhampton

Geoff Layer

271,000

283,000

University of Worcester

David Green

325,000

325,000

Wrexham Glyndwr University

Maria Hinfelaar

187,035

217,858

Writtle University College

Stephen Waite

134,000

136,000

University of York

Koen Lamberts

248,333

293,978

York St John University

Karen Stanton

200,000

200,000

 

Total

 

39,484,561

44,912,179

Average

 

254,739

289,756

Median

 

253,000

287,000

Notes: Figures typically represent the period 1 August 2016 to 31 July 2017. Figures for 2015-16, on the basis of which percentage changes are calculated, are taken from the most recent accounts except where indicated. In some cases, these differ slightly from the figures Times Higher Education published last year.
The University of Bolton is not included in this table as its accounts were not ready by the time THE went to press
‡ payment made “in respect of an unregistered, unfunded retirements benefits scheme”
~ = no longer in post
^ = died in office
* = accounts are for 1 April 2016 to 31 March 2017
** = acting vice-chancellor
*** = accounts are for calendar year 2016; 2015 figures relate to a lower-paid acting vice-chancellor; in 2016, the vice-chancellor announced he would donate £41,000 of his £191,000 salary to charity in 2017
1 Salary includes £429,000 in “compensation for loss of office” 
2 A long-term incentive plan is in place for the vice-chancellor for an initial period of four years commencing 2015-16, with a total maximum value of £80,000
3 Salary includes £186,876 in compensation for loss of office 
4 Salary excludes a five-year deferred bonus arrangement in place, with a maximum of £49,000 payable in December 2017 
5 Salary includes £20,000 “lump sum” 
6 Salary includes £74,000 payment “in connection with retirement from office” 
7 Burgess was both acting and deputy v-c during 2016-17, and the figures are the total for the financial year 
8 Salary includes a £47,000 clinical excellence award 
9 Figures for 2015-16 are taken from 2016 accounts as the 2017 accounts only include details of Chris Husbands’ salary in that year, as opposed to the total cost of office 
10 Salary includes £230,000 paid in lieu of notice 
11 University of Wales Trinity St David shares its vice-chancellor with the University of Wales, which pays 20 per cent of the amounts indicated 
Source: Figures taken from universities’ financial statements

POSTSCRIPT:

Print headline: Chalk it up to oversight

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Reader's comments (2)

John Raftery, vice-chancellor of London Metropolitan University, claims that it is not unreasonable for those involved in a high-performing sector to receive fair remuneration. But those who actually deliver this "high performance" have -- as a result of decisions by these same vice-chancellors through Universities UK -- for nearly ten years, been kept to salary increases below the level of inflation.
Where is Heythrop College in this year's table? Always my favourite, with the VC getting just a little over £10k the last time it appeared in the VC pay survey. I wish it had enjoyed a valedictory mention in its final year of existence, just to remind everyone else how it can be done.

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