Comparing Vice-Chancellors' salaries - OTT and out of touch? NTEU Victorian Division briefing note.

NTEU analysis of Vice-Chancellors’ salaries: Comparison with salary levels of Level E Academic (Professor) and HEW 1 Professional Staff (May 2024)

Briefing note by the National Tertiary Education Union, Victorian Division Prepared by Bill Maloney, NTEU Industrial Officer, and Professor Joo-Cheong Tham, NTEU Victorian Assistant Secretary (Academic Staff) 

Background points

• The Australian Universities Accord Review haslaid down the community expectation that universities be ‘exemplary employers’
• The Victorian Government has made clear its expectation that ‘universities will demonstrate the highest ethical standards as leaders and major employers in the Victorian community.’
• The Australian Universities Vice-Chancellor and Senior Staff Remuneration Code stresses, ‘(g)iven the material public funding provided to universities, it is important to consider society’s contemporary expectations and norms’ (emphasis added).
• The annual salary (basic salary and additional salary) of the Victorian Premier is $406 483.
• Upon becoming the Vice-Chancellor of the Australian National University, Nobel Laureate Professor Brian Schmidt negotiated his salary down to $484 000 on the basis that if he were to be paid more than three times the professoriate, he would be saying ‘I am different to you; I am not of your ilk’ (‘the Schmidt principle’).
• A New South Wales Parliamentary report has said that ‘[t]he current system that sees University Vice Chancellors paid 25 or thirty times more than many of the people undertaking the core work of universities must be reviewed and the failure to do this by the governing bodies of universities is evidence of a failure of leadership’ (emphasis added).

Key points of analysis

All Victorian Vice-Chancellors are paid more than the Victorian Premier with:

• All but one (Vice Chancellor of Federation University) paid more than twice the Victorian Premier;
• The Vice-Chancellors of Monash University and the University of Melbourne are paid more than three times the Victorian Premier.

The salaries of all Victorian Vice-Chancellors breach the Schmidt principle of being more than three times the salary levels of the professoriate:

• The salaries of the Vice-Chancellors of Monash University and the University of Melbourne are the worst on this count and exceed the salary levels of the professoriate by more than six times.
• The salaries of the Vice-Chancellors of Monash University, RMIT University and the University of Melbourne are more than twenty times that of HEW 1 Professional Staff - this may point to governance problems.