University vice-chancellor pay to mirror top public service jobs

A new university watchdog will peg university leaders’ pay to that of top public servants | See how VCs’ salaries compare to top bureaucrats

University of Melbourne vice-chancellor Duncan Maskell, University of Sydney vice-chancellor Mark Scott, and Queensland University of Technology vice-chancellor Margaret Sheil.

Million-dollar salaries for vice-chancellors are set to end, with a new university watchdog to peg their pay to that of top public servants.

Federal Education Minister Jason Clare will announce the first national expert governance council within days, to set independent rules for executive ­remuneration. He said the council would also crack down on systemic wage theft from academics and lecturers.

“We need to strengthen governance arrangements in our universities,’’ Mr Clare said. “There have been too many shocking examples of wage theft. All workers should rightly ­expect their employer pays them correctly and fairly.’’

The intervention in univer­sity governance by federal, state and territory education ministers follows a scathing report by the National Tertiary Education Union last week, detailing $226m in confirmed underpayments to university staff.

The union revealed that 306 senior academic leaders are paid more than state premiers.

A spokesman for Mr Clare said the governance council would also scrutinise vice-chancellors’ pay.

“It will focus on making sure universities demonstrate and maintain a rigorous and transparent process for developing ­remuneration policies and settings for senior university staff,’’ he said.

He said the council would ­ensure that “consideration is given to comparable scale and complexity of public service ­entities (such as) government departments, and ensure remuneration policies and packages are publicly reported.’’

Australian vice-chancellors are among the world’s highest paid, pocketing an average of $1.048m across 37 universities last year, based on remuneration packages revealed in their ­annual reports.

But the breakdown of base salary and benefits, as well as performance targets for bonuses and the criteria for pay decisions, are set in secrecy by university senates.

Pegging pay to public service remuneration rates is likely to lead to savage salary cuts for vice-chancellors – although it is not clear whether changes will be retrospective or apply only to new appointments.

University of Sydney vice-chancellor Mark Scott earned between $1.17m and $1.18m last year. He earned half as much in a previous job heading the NSW Education Department, whose secretary Murat Dizdar was paid $623,000 last year.

Mr Dizdar controls a $24bn budget with 107,108 staff and nearly 800,000 students.

Professor Scott is responsible for 9051 staff and 68,421 students, with revenue of $3.4bn.

His university’s underpayment of staff left it with financial liabilities totalling $77m in ­December last year.

Professor Scott also earns nearly twice as much as CSIRO chief executive Doug Hilton, who earned a base salary of $588,810 as part of a $639,748 ­remuneration package.

Dr Hilton runs a budget of $1.73bn, with 6234 staff.

Queensland University of Technology vice-chancellor Margaret Sheil earned $1.23m last year – with a base salary of $1,055,000, plus a $151,000 bonus and $28,000 in superannuation.

Her university has a $1.18bn budget, with 4509 staff and 52,000 students.

In contrast, Queensland TAFE paid its chief executive John Tucker a $350,000 base salary – with a total package of $404,000 – to run an agency with 4417 staff, a $834m budget, and 144,000 students.

Melbourne University vice-chancellor Duncan Maskell received $1.44m in salary, superannuation and fringe benefits last year.

His university has 10,514 staff, 54,000 students and $2.9bn in operating income.

Staff had to be back-paid $39m over the past two years to rectify wage theft.

The Victorian Health Department’s chief executive, Euan Wallace, was paid $660,000 to administer a $29.4bn budget with 3034 staff.

Australian vice-chancellors are paid far more than in the United Kingdom, where salaries averaged $813,000 across 24 universities in 2022-23.

Oxford University’s vice-chancellor was on track to earn $1.3m last year, based on a six-monthly salary published in the university’s annual report.

Many Australian vice-chancellors earn more than Reserve Bank governor Michele Bullock, whose base salary is $1.03m.

ABC managing director David Anderson’s base salary is $974,000, while the fixed salary of Wesfarmers chief executive Rob Scott – who runs the ­nation’s biggest retail conglomerate with 120,000 employees – is $2.6m.

Aside from the creation of a university governance council, the Tertiary Education Quality Standards Agency is investigating serious allegations by the NTEU that an unidentified ­“college’’ forced staff to “stay up all night fabricating student records’’ before a re-registration inspection.

“They’d never kept adequate records of grades, thus staff had to invent assessment grades to match the final awarded grade for each assessment, for every unit, for every student,’’ a whistleblower told the union, in evidence published in its report.

“Everything was finished only a couple of hours before the TEQSA inspectors arrived.’’

A TEQSA spokesman said that the NTEU had not previously disclosed the allegation “and we have approached the union to seek further information.

“We encourage anyone with information about alleged noncompliance by a higher education provider to report the matter to TEQSA.”