University Vice Chancellors don’t want you talking about their millions. Why we need to keep at it
University Vice Chancellors don’t want you to talk about the millions of dollars they, and their senior managers, pocket from public institutions. For a healthy society and trust in the university sector, the senior management takeover of universities can’t be allowed to continue.
With trust in universities dropping, what did former Melbourne University Vice Chancellor, Duncan Maskell, have to say about universities “losing the public relations war”?
As quoted by the Australian Financial Review, “Maskell says he ‘honestly doesn’t know‘ why universities are not getting cut-through to governments, or the media for that matter”.
Maskell’s pay was around $1.5 million in 2024 before retiring to “do nothing”.
The rest of us who still have to do things might look for some answers in the submissions to the current federal inquiry into university governance.
At the time of writing, there are 256 submissions listed.
Don’t mention the millions
The questionably-named Universities Australia had a pretty clear message for that inquiry: don’t mention the millions of dollars that VCs pocket.
Or, as they put it, “Debate over vice-chancellor salaries, for example, distracts from the conversation we need to have about funding our universities properly”.
Calling millions of dollars for Australian Vice Chancellors a distraction probably isn’t a surprise. After all, the Universities Australia board is made up of – you guessed it – Australian Vice Chancellors.
Its chair (until 29 May) was David Lloyd, UniSA Vice Chancellor since 2013. His recent pay packets from the University of South Australia have been $1.202 million for 2020, $1.219 million for 2021, $1.401 million for 2022 and $1.235 million for 2023. (The 2024 amount wasn’t available at the time of writing.)
But Vice Chancellors’ millions aren’t the only millions that should be ringing alarm bells.
There are also the millions that their institutions have failed to pay their staff to (among other things) teach their students.
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The Fair Work Ombudsman had something to say about that in their submission to the inquiry:
From July 2019 to 31 December 2024, the FWO’s activities have recovered over $176 million for more than 80,000 higher education sector employees. This accounts for 9% of the FWO’s total recoveries in that time.
And that’s far from the end of it.
That’s a lot of millions that VCs don’t want us talking about.
“Very fortunate” fortunes
University of Adelaide Vice Chancellor, Peter Høj, didn’t help put the “distraction” of VC millions to rest on ABC Radio Adelaide in February last year when he declared a matter “above my pay grade”.
When asked what that could be, given Høj’s substantial salary (around a million a year), Høj responded, “I’m very fortunate to be paid what I’m paid.”
There was more of the same when Høj and Lloyd appeared in the Legislative Council Budget and Finance Committee hearing last month. This time Høj was “incredibly privileged” and Lloyd “very grateful” to receive their millions.
Maskell didn’t do much better, as quoted in the Australian Financial Review: “Look, when I came here in 2018, I was offered a particular salary. They must have arrived at it somehow”.
Høj provided essentially the same rationale to the Committee: “I think that the people who set the salaries should form a view of what an appropriate pay is.”
It’s tough to argue with that kind of logic.
Or to know exactly what it means.
So why do the salary questions always seem to stop there? Who are these “people who set the salaries” who “should form a view of what an appropriate pay is”?
What exactly is this process that Maskell helpfully described as “somehow”?
To answer that, you’d have to look into university councils. But you probably won’t see very far.
Stacked governance behind closed doors
Exactly how each university council works varies depending on state government legislation.
While they may have a handful of elected members from staff and students, councils can generally appoint other members as they see fit – no public process or academic credentials required.
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So it’s not at all surprising that National Tertiary Education Union research shows that “Australia’s public universities have become stacked with unelected members brought in from big business”.
Seeming to chase prestige rather than academic values, councils can also embrace figures from political parties who underfunded universities and/or failed to undo damaging legislation.
Bill Shorten found a post-political landing spot in the role of University of Canberra Vice Chancellor, Julie Bishop currently serves as Australian National University Chancellor (despite a vote of no confidence by staff), and so on.
University councils increasingly seem to have very little connection to, interest in, or knowledge of, what’s actually happening on the ground beyond the reports from the limited range of senior managers they hear from.
As one former council member from Flinders University described it in a rare glimpse behind the closed doors:
“Councils act as rubber stamps of the CEO, the Vice-Chancellor, and small decision-making committees (finance, appointments) where students/staff are excluded. … In my three years on the Flinders Council, there was only one meeting at which an issue was openly and freely discussed and brought to a vote of the whole Council.”
Following an ICAC investigation into a former University of Adelaide Vice Chancellor, Michael West Media quoted a university council member with a similar description:
“In effect everyone is subservient to the vice-chancellor. I wonder how many other things have not made it to councils or Senates?”
The Fair Work Ombudsman’s inquiry submission highlights an increasingly-familiar sense of disconnection, in this case from little things like fundamental legal obligations:
“Our review of university governance processes regarding compliance with workplace laws revealed significant sector-wide weakness and systemic issues. Inadequate governance and a lack of senior management oversight emerged as the underpinning element … This has had a hefty financial and wellbeing impact on university staff.”
Vice Chancellors and university councils exist because legislation says they do. They are not endorsed by and do not represent the people who do the vital work that universities need to do.
If university councils are allowed to operate largely in secrecy behind closed doors and rely on self-reporting of success from senior managers to appointed members with limited sector knowledge, it’s difficult to see how they can receive any public, staff or student recognition as functional governing bodies.
How do councils evaluate success against the public obligations of a university? What do councils see to do that?
Just as importantly, what don’t they see?
Restoring a vital public resource
Just slowing the cash flow into VC and senior management bank accounts won’t fix universities. But trust in universities can’t be restored when transparency and accountability seem so far away for the “fortunate” senior managers who build enormous private fortunes from public institutions.
Federal governments do need to urgently fund universities properly to ensure that they can serve the public as intended.
People also need to be confident that university governance is supporting academics, teachers, researchers, staff and students.
The Federal Government’s Expert Council on University Governance will soon hand down its recommendations for governance reform.
To start repairing some of the damage, these reforms must at least ensure proper staff and student representation in governing bodies, real transparency for university council appointments and decision-making, and robust protections for staff.
“Why doesn’t the public trust universities?” ask the multi-millionaire executives appointed by unrepresentative boards to chase useless metrics and preside over a sector mired in underpayments, exploitation of staff, “rich asynchronous digital activities”, alarming ICAC reports, corporatisation, skyrocketing executive salaries, the diminishment of academic titles, ongoing concerns about plummeting education quality, waves of cuts, and demoralised, exhausted and injured staff.
I wonder why.
Dr Kit MacFarlane is NTEU Adelaide University Branch co-President (previously UniSA Branch President), NTEU SA Division Assistant Secretary, a lecturer in UniSA Creative, and was the academic staff member elected to UniSA Council in 2022-2023.
