Opinion: Australia leads world in university vice-chancellor salaries

The cap-and-gown coterie has been quietly raking in the green stuff big time, while the average punter trawls for home-brand specials, writes Mike O’Connor. VOTE IN OUR POLL

QUT tops Queensland’s university vice-chancellor salaries at $1.235m.

• VC award: Paid more than PM

If you aspire to becoming a multimillionaire, there is a path to a lavish lifestyle of five-star indulgence that does not involve buying lotto tickets.

I’ve been buying them for 40 years, and my total winnings to date amount to $1561.25 on an investment of around $35,000 – but hey, there’s always next week.

A far more reliable route is to get your feet under a desk at a university and start your ascent up the greasy pole to the office of vice-chancellor which sits at its pinnacle.

A little-known Senate committee has been conducting a deep dive into the murky waters that swirl around the remuneration deals being done in the shaded cloisters of academe by university executives, and found that the cap-and-gown coterie has been quietly raking in the green stuff big time while the average punter has been shuffling up and down the aisles at Woolies and Coles trawling for home-brand specials.

According to the Senate Education and Employment Legislative Committee there are presently more than 306 university executives earning more than their state premiers or chief ministers with vice chancellors routinely earning more than a million dollars a year.

According to evidence given to the committee, vice-chancellors and senior executives in Australian universities command exorbitant salaries that are increasingly misaligned with both public expectations and institutional performance.

In 2023 the vice-chancellor of the University of Sydney earned over $1.17m, with these salaries frequently justified by comparisons to corporate executives yet as was pointed out to the committee, universities are public institutions with a responsibility to prioritise education and research over profit-driven motives.

They are supposed to exist for the good of the community, not their executives.

In 2023 the top 12 vice-chancellor salaries were University of Canberra $1.785m, Monash University $1.565m, University of Melbourne $1.447m, University of New South Wales $1.322m, Flinders University $1.315m, Queensland University of Technology $1.235m, University of South Australia $1.235m, University of Queensland $1.162m, University of Tasmania $1.115m and Australian National University $1.1m.

The gravy train doesn’t stop there, with membership of the millionaires’ club extended to a further nine universities who paid their vice-chancellor salaries in excess of $1m, with other VCs having to struggle along on salaries ranging from $652,000 to $975,000 – on average around seven times that of a university lecturer.

Put simply, Australian vice-chancellors are the highest paid in the world, with an average salary of $1,066,758. In Canada it’s $546,204.

University of South Australia is somewhere below 300th in world rankings, but pays its VC $1,235,000. The University of Copenhagen, ranked at 97, pays its VC $407,769.

The obvious message for Danish VCs is to pack your bags and head on down to sunny Adelaide where the pickings – and the wine – are that much more intoxicating.

Do these highly paid uni bosses achieve higher academic results? Sadly, it would seem not, with the Australia Institute telling the committee’s senators that universities with higher-paid vice-chancellors delivered lower satisfaction rates, with the three universities paying their vice-chancellors the most scoring very low levels of student satisfaction.

Southern Cross University is one of the smallest in the country and is ranked 638th in the world, but paid its vice-chancellor between $975,000 and $989,000. It also suffers an extremely high dropout rate with two thirds of students failing to finish their degrees.

A submission by a student guild pointed out that universities in the UK were required to disclose vice-chancellor salaries, pensions, and benefits to an independent regulator whereas in Australia any such disclosures were voluntary, making it difficult to work out the total amount of remuneration packages.

The committee was also told of the potential for perceived conflicts of interest such as at a university where four senior roles were held by people who had previously acted as consultants for a company with which the university had spent more than $2.5m in consultancy fees.

Given the billions of taxpayer dollars the federal government pumps into tertiary education each year it’s time it stepped up and regulated what has become a very cosy girls’ and boys’ club for the members of the educational elite who are answerable only to themselves.

It’s time to tell them to dump the Harry Potter costumes and haul them into the real world of transparency and accountability.

Originally published as Opinion: Australia leads world in university vice-chancellor salaries