Jo Johnson, the universities and science minister, and Lord Adonis, the former education minister, have criticised the high salaries of vice-chancellors, suggesting that this is unacceptable in the present environment of high student debt. When I?started as a lecturer on ?22,000, in 1990, the vice-chancellor earned just under ?90,000. A lecturer starting the same job now will make ?32,000 and work for a boss who is being paid ?320,000. Universities have defended this by claiming that they are paying for high-value leadership in a competitive world.?
But focusing on leaders’ salaries hides substantive issues elsewhere in the sector, and makes me wonder if Johnson and Adonis are simply engaged in a headline-grabbing exercise similar to what we saw from Gordon Brown in his attack on the University of Oxford over its rejection of a state school pupil.?
Even if vice-chancellors’ salaries were to be reduced by, say, ?150,000, the saving will pay for the education of just 10 students.? The real damage comes from a widespread acceptance that it is leadership from the very top, and how that is implemented via a hierarchy of middle managers, that is the driver of success in UK universities. Successful scholarship is primarily dependent on two parameters, neither of which is achievable in a strongly hierarchical setting – curiosity-driven research, and the education of juniors. Scanning papers in my subject area that were submitted for evaluation in the last research excellence framework, I?notice that the papers that I?would class as world-leading are more likely to have come from a PhD student and his or her supervisor working on an open-ended idea than from an externally funded research grant. Meanwhile, I?achieve good evaluations from students who are taking my modules by setting assignments that are challenging.?
Forgetting the true drivers of scholarship, and believing in strong top-down methods of leadership, has had the unfortunate effect of putting politicians in a position where they can accuse vice-chancellors of greed, and those who set their pay of irresponsibility.?
Mahesan Niranjan
Department of electronics and computer science
University of Southampton
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