Average pay packages for British university bosses hit £340,000 last year despite the sector making sweeping redundancies, analysis has revealed.
The median total remuneration for vice-chancellors at 121 UK universities that have published their financial accounts to date reached £340,901 in the 2023-24 academic year.
It marks an increase of around 4 per cent from the year before and means university leaders’ pay has jumped around £40,000 since 2020-21, when the figure was £302,917, according to Times Higher Education.
Total pay packages typically include a basic salary, plus benefits such as accommodation costs, pensions and travel expenses. They can sometimes be awarded to multiple vice-chancellors at a single university if there is a change of leadership within the academic year.
The largest total pay awards last year were £694,000 at the University of Leeds and £595,000 at London Metropolitan University, both of which included exit packages for departing vice-chancellors.
Prof Simone Buitendijk, who stepped down as leader of Leeds University in December 2023, received a final pay packet of £434,000 despite her resigning just months into the academic year. It included a salary of £146,000, plus £288,000 in “contractual post-employment notice pay” and “compensation for loss of office”.
Prof Hai-Sui Yu was awarded £260,000 for his time as Leeds University’s interim vice-chancellor between November 2023 and the end of July 2024.
London Metropolitan’s total vice-chancellor pay package for 2023-24 included a £297,000 salary for Prof Lynn Dobbs, plus an extra £6,000 staff reward, £73,000 in pension contributions and £219,000 “contractual pay” when she retired last summer.
Meanwhile, the University of Cambridge awarded £577,000 in total remuneration last year to Prof Deborah Prentice, who was appointed vice-chancellor in July 2023.
It included an annual salary of £409,000, plus benefits including “personal travel” expenses of £22,564 and relocation costs from the US, where she previously served as provost of Princeton University.
It comes despite universities making drastic cost-cutting measures as the sector faces serious financial difficulty.
In total, more than half of all UK universities are currently making redundancies or cutting courses, according to a rolling list of cuts compiled by the University and College Union (UCU).
Two Russell Group universities announced hundreds of job cuts within hours of one another last week.
Cardiff University said it would launch a consultation on proposals to axe 400 full-time academic jobs, slash key courses and merge faculties as it fights to remain “viable”.
Modern languages, nursing, ancient history, music, and religion and theology are among the subjects the Welsh institution is looking to junk as it grapples with a £31 million funding black hole.
Cutting professional services
Durham University also set out plans last week to save up to £20 million over the next two years, half of which it expects will come from cutting 200 professional services jobs this year.
As many as 72 per cent of universities in England are expected to slump into a deficit by the 2025-26 academic year, according to the Office for Students, the higher education regulator.
The sector has blamed a dramatic drop in international student numbers following a Tory crackdown on dependent visas, plus years of frozen tuition fees that have crippled university finances.
Labour announced last November it would raise tuition fees in line with inflation from September 2025, following warnings that universities are currently making a loss of around £2,500 for each domestic student.
It means the annual price of a degree will increase from the current £9,250 to £9,535 from next year – the first uplift since 2017.
The party had previously pledged to scrap tuition fees altogether and cap vice-chancellor pay. Angela Rayner, the Housing Secretary, said while serving as shadow education secretary in 2018 that Labour would introduce a 20:1 pay ratio for the public sector.
It would have capped vice-chancellors’ pay at 20 times that of their university’s lowest-paid employee, which Ms Rayner said would “halt spiralling pay inequality in its tracks”.
The Government has since promised to reform the student loan system, with plans set to be unveiled by summer 2025.
A Cambridge University spokesman said: “As one of the top universities in the world, we need to attract and retain high-performing leaders. The vice-chancellor’s salary is less than the leaders of some other UK universities and far less than her counterparts in North America.”
A Department for Education spokesman said: “Universities are autonomous and responsible for managing their own budgets, including vice-chancellor salaries and wider benefits.
“However, the secretary of state has been clear that, as part of wider reform of the system, there must be a renewed drive for efficiency in the sector, including much less wasteful spending.
“We remain committed to fixing the foundations of higher education to deliver change for students.”
