Salaries for vice chancellors should be linked to the size of the universities they run, the head of the new higher education regulator has said.
Nicola Dandridge, chief executive of the Office for Students (OfS), has told MPs that universities which have ‘less responsibilities’ should be paying their bosses more modestly.
The watchdog, which comes into being in April, will be tasked with holding universities to account on their spending on senior pay.
Salaries for vice chancellors should be linked to the size of the universities they run, a watchdog chief has said. Bath University paid Dame Glynis Breakwell £468,000 last year
It follows a scandal which saw one of the country’s smaller institutions – Bath – paying its vice chancellor the highest salary of any in the country.
Dame Glynis Breakwell was paid £468,000 last year, a pay rise of £18,000 on the previous year.
Meanwhile, nearby Bath Spa University paid its outgoing vice chancellor Christina Slade £808,000 – which included a golden goodbye package worth almost half a million.
Yesterday, Ms Dandridge told the education select committee that universities would need to justify themselves if they are paying vast amounts.
Asked if pay should be linked to performance, she said: ‘Yes, and also linked to the size of the organisation you are running – some are huge, billion pound international operations and some have far less responsibility.’
She added: ‘I am not sure what the uniform metrics will look like but it must be linked in some transparent way to performance, that must be right.’
Nicola Dandridge, chief executive of the Office for Students (OfS), has told MPs that universities which have ‘less responsibilities’ should be paying their bosses more modestly
She said the public was right to be concerned about excessive remuneration for university leaders and outlined plans for the sector to have to justify all pay above £150,000.
She added: ‘We are waiting to see whether the sector can address this, seriously address this, and address the levels of pay and ensure that they are justified.
‘And if they are not, the OfS will have to intervene.’
New proposals for setting senior pay are being drawn up by the Committee of University Chairs (CUC).
She added: ‘There is a sense in which some senior salaries have got out of kilter and there is a legitimate public concern about the levels of some of the salaries.
‘We are proposing that anyone being paid more than £150,000 per year will be required to justify it, and the OfS will look at that justification to make sure that it is appropriate.
‘There is an issue that needs to be addressed and it is something that we at the Office for Students, I think, have to take very seriously. If the pay can’t be justified then we will have to get into a discussion with the institution about what happens next. But we have an array of tools and responses available to us to deal with it.’