University staff blow the whistle on wage theft, waste and jobs for mates

Eye-popping pay for vice-chancellors is revealed in a damning new study that blows the whistle on ‘reckless largesse’ and wasteful spending at universities.

Vice-chancellors from Australian National University, Monash University, University of Melbourne, University of Sydney and Deakin University at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: Martin Ollman/NewsWire

Universities have cut 2291 jobs this year as vice-chancellors pocket million-dollar salaries, with 306 academic leaders paid more than state premiers.

Widespread wage theft, wasteful spending and conflicts of ­interest are outlined in a damning report from the National Tertiary Education Union.

Using data gleaned from university annual reports and testimony from hundreds of anonymised staff whistleblowers, the NTEU details a “crisis of governance’’ in higher education.

Exposing “the overpaid executive class and their reckless spending’’, the NTEU reveals universities spent $734m on external consultants in 2023.

The average vice-chancellor remuneration package across 37 public universities was $1.048m – almost double the $587,000 paid to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese last year, the report shows.

The University of Canberra’s outgoing vice-chancellor, Paddy Nixon, received a $1.785m ­remuneration package last year. The university recently announced 200 redundancies.

Mr Nixon’s replacement, Bill Shorten – the Minister for the NDIS – has pledged to take a 15 per cent pay cut when he takes up the post next year.

Chancellor Lisa Paul on Wednesday said vice-chancellor salary and entitlements were “confidentially negotiated with university council’’.

“Professor Paddy Nixon resigned … and received payment as per his contractual arrangements, which were set about five years ago,’’ she said.

A spokeswoman for University of NSW vice-chancellor Attila Brungs disputed the NTEU’s publication of his pay at $1.32m, saying his total remuneration is set at $1.15m.

“The (NTEU figure) includes not only remuneration but an additional accounting provision for long service accrued and any untaken annual leave balance,’’ she said.

“The University Council determines the total remuneration of Professor Attila Brungs, which is set at $1.15m, including salary, bonus and superannuation.’’

An NTEU spokesman said the disputed remuneration figure showed that “these things are not reported in a clear and consistent way.’’

The University of Canberra’s outgoing vice-chancellor Professor Paddy Nixon.

Bill Shorten will take over as University of Canberra vice-chancellor next year. Picture: Martin Ollman

The NTEU report shows that 306 senior executives are paid more than premiers. Sixteen staff at Monash University last year ­received more than Victorian Premier ­Jacinta Allan’s salary of $481,000.

NTEU national president Alison Barnes said university councils stacked with corporate ­appointees had failed to justify vice-chancellors’ salaries, which should be pegged to premiers’ pay rates. “Vice-chancellors getting paid double the Prime Minister’s (salary) are blowing $734m on consultants while cutting jobs, stealing $400m from staff and presiding over serious potential conflicts of interest,’’ she said.

“There’s not a single public ­institution we would tolerate this conduct in, and universities should be no exception.

“Australia urgently needs a federal parliamentary inquiry into university governance and workforce planning. Public universities are publicly funded and should work for the public good.’’

The NTEU tallied wage theft at $226m in confirmed underpayments – with a further $168m in disputed payments – affecting 142,000 workers across 30 universities. Two-thirds of all university staff are employed using casual or fixed-term contracts.

The NTEU report claims that “conflicts of interest are the norm’’, with little transparency over the appointment of consultants who are sometimes hired to run the divisions they were paid to review. One whistleblower told the union university managers had brought in “friends, consultants, school friends, paid them big bucks to tell them how to run the uni’’.

“Not a single thing (was) delivered successfully, with millions gone down the drain … then (they) brought in austerity measures because of their pure incompetence and negligence.’’

The report details “reckless largesse with university money’’ spent on vanity projects. One university spent nearly $1m to refurbish a vice-chancellor’s office three times in one year, it states.

A staff member blew the whistle on a university that spent more than $75,000 for an art installation for a chancellor, along with a VIP lunch for 80 guests, at the same time staff were subjected to a freeze on travel and hiring.

“The fountains at our new engineering building were made of Italian granite, which cost into the hundreds of thousands,’’ another staff member said. “Meanwhile we have mass lay-offs and cuts to research funding.’’

National Tertiary Education Union president Alison Barnes is calling for a parliamentary inquiry into university governance. Picture: Twitter

The report also alleges an unidentified “college” forced staff to “stay up all night fabricating student records’’ before a re-registration inspection by the Tertiary Education Quality Standards Authority.

“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.

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

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