The WA university executives paid more than our state premier

Almost 30 executives from across Western Australia’s five universities are paid more than the state’s premier, while their vice chancellors all earn more than the prime minister.

The National Tertiary Education Union’s Ending Bad Governance – For Good report was released late Wednesday evening, calling for greater transparency around university management and the ways money is spent.

It found universities nationally had an average of six executives who were paid more than their respective premiers.

In WA, two universities significantly exceeded that average, but all employed at least one taking home more than Premier Roger Cook’s salary in 2023.

Vice-chancellors across the state earned between $865,000 and $1,035,000. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, meanwhile, earned $587,000.

“The constant merry-go-round of newly appointed and highly paid vice chancellors, chancellors and senior executives have created inflexible, profit-driven bureaucracies at the expense of high-quality expert-led education and research,” the report warns.

“Opaque senior appointments, prolific wage theft, heavy reliance on a casualised workforce, course and job cuts, and wasteful and inefficient spending have all served to reduce trust in university managements to an all-time low.”

The report questioned “reckless spending” by universities to employ consultants and professional services that were “concealed from scrutiny”.

“Universities have been notorious consumers of paid management advice from large consulting firms, with very little transparency regarding how much has been paid out and to which firm for what advice, and if this represents value for the community,” it reads.

The University of Western Australia forked out more than $41.6 million for those services in 2023 – one of the highest figures nationally – followed by Curtin University and Edith Cowan University, which spent more than $20 million each.

The University of Notre Dame spent more than $7 million while Murdoch University’s figure was “not discernible”.

The report claimed universities were working “against the public interest” by pouring more money into governance than teaching, and that this money would be better spent on wage increases to teaching staff, or on keeping them employed.

Anonymous submissions from workers across WA agreed, highlighting times management had decreased their pay or created work environments they found challenging.

One worker claimed the university they worked at had removed ‘joint-levels’ in 2019 – for example a person on level 6/7 was demoted to level 6.

“This resulted in a drop of $10,000 a year and loss of super contributions. This has happened in other teams during 2010-2020,” they wrote.

Another described a “culture of cronyism and bullying by university management.”

There is a lack of holistic system-wide planning that leaves academic teachers and researchers with impossible work expectations.

Anonymous, WA

“Once it becomes normalised it is almost impossible to address because most in senior positions have benefited from this workplace culture (and may no longer even see what is happening),” they said.

The union’s national president Alison Barnes said the research had been built on the testimonies of hundreds of higher education staff who had “provided overwhelming evidence of a university governance crisis that has spiralled out of control.”

“Workers have been sounding the alarm on these major issues for the better part of a decade, and yet we have seen no genuine or effective response from federal or state governments,” she said.

Barnes said Australia urgently needed a federal parliamentary inquiry into university governance and workforce planning.

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