8 Times Higher Education8 February 2018Pay transparency
Leading universities
oppose OfS pay
transparency
demands
Plans to force English universities
to publish the salary details of all
staff earning more than £150,
have been criticised as “dispropor-
tionate” and potentially damaging
by leading institutions.
While the new Office for Stu-
dents has pledged to tackle the
“excessive pay of vice-chancellors”,
its new proposals go much further
on the issue by insisting that institu-
tions publish the job descriptions of
all staff earning more than £150,
a year. Universities must also dis-
close “full details of the remuner-
ation packages of those staff,
including bonuses and pension con-
tributions” and provide a justifica-
tion of this pay that references
“performance against outcome
measures”.
Under the plans, published in the
OfS’ consultation on its new regula-
tory framework, releasing these
details would be an “ongoing con-
dition of registration” to the new
higher education regulator.
The proposed new requirement
is likely to oblige universities to
report details of hundreds of
academics and high-earning admin-
istrators, in addition to vice-
chancellors.
In its response to the OfS consul-
tation, the Russell Group, which
represents 24 research-intensive uni-
versities, says that “around three-
quarters of those paid over£150,000 are on academic contracts
(including clinical academics where
the pay scales are set by the NHS)”.
Describing the plans as “dispro-
portionate”, the Russell Group says
that they “risk undermining the
ability of institutions to compete
in an international market for
academic and professional services
talent”.
“It would be counterproductive
to UK higher education and research
to make the reward arrangements
of top-performing academics and
managers known to competitors,”
it adds.
The Russell Group has urged the
OfS to allow universities to continue
with current arrangements under
which they sign up to the Commit-
tee of University Chairs’ voluntary
code on pay, which is currently
under review.
The University of Birmingham
also opposes the OfS plans, describ-
ing the proposed requirement as
“very onerous” in its consultation
response.
“We support the need for greater
transparency in senior staff remu-
neration but have concerns about
the regulatory burden that will be
imposed by [these] detailed require-
ments,” says the university, which,
according to its annual accounts,
paid 48 individuals more than
£150,000 in 2016-17.
The requirement is also likely to
lead to greater transparency in the
rare cases in which some universi-
ties’ staff are paid more than the
vice-chancellor.
At the University of Cambridge,
four staff members were paid more
than the £355,000 salary earned by
Sir Leszek Borysiewicz in 2016-17,
with the highest-paid earning
between £640,000 and £650,000,
university accounts state. ThreeTuition fees
US state systems
freeze tuition
fees as enrolment
falters
Growing numbers of US state uni-
versity systems are predicted to
freeze tuition fees in response to fal-
tering enrolment levels, but a lead-
ing researcher has warned that this
could undermine efforts to widen
participation.
Last month, the University of Illi-
nois system, which has three cam-
puses, and Northern Illinois
University both froze in-state tuition
fees for the fourth consecutive year,
with a view to increasing numbers
of applicants.
Student numbers in Illinois plum-
meted because of a two-year state
budget stalemate between July 2015
and July 2017, during which time
universities received just a fractionof their typical levels of funding.
The state’s overall population has
also been declining since 2014.
Iris Palmer, a senior policy ana-
lyst at the thinktank New America,
said that public university systems
tended to freeze tuition fees when
the state increased its direct invest-
ment in higher education and to
raise fees when university funding
was cut.
However, she predicted that an
increasing number of public uni-
versity systems would freeze tuition
fees in an effort to increase enrol-
ments.
She cited the University of Maine
as an example of a public system
that has recently taken this step “to
make the schools more appealing to
out-of-state students and to other
students in the state”. Like Illinois,
Maine has a declining population
as well as a high number of colleges
and universities, she said.
In-state tuition fees at the Uni-
versity of Maine increased last year
after having been frozen for the pre-
vious six years. In addition, four of
its campuses pledged last year to
cover the cost of tuition and fees for
low-income students.
Louisiana, West Virginia and sev-
eral New England states also suffer
from a declining youth population,
Ms Palmer said.
“In those states, getting good
press from freezing tuition to try to
recruit students will continue,” she
said. “Another thing they’re doing
is offering out-of-state students in-
state tuition rates to try to drive up
enrolment.”
Ms Palmer added that universi-
ties would have to “figure out how
to make do with less funding if they
continue to freeze tuition as a way
to drive enrolment”.
But John Douglass, senior
research fellow in public policy and
higher education at the University
of California, Berkeley, said that
“freezing undergraduate tuition
[fees] at public universities is not
necessarily a good policy” if the aim
is to improve access.
“When the University of Cali-
fornia significantly increased tuition
in the wake of the Great Recession
and declining state funding, the
number of lower-income students
enrolling in one of the university’s
nine undergraduate campuses went
up. That is because tuition is now
a significant funding source for
financial aid,” he said. “About 33
per cent of all tuition income at UC,
and most major public universities,
goes to financial aid.”
Ms Palmer agreed that univer-
sities could “target lower prices bet-staff members at the University of
Oxford earned more than Louise
Richardson, its vice-chancellor,
whose salary was £366,000 that
year, with the highest-paid earning
between £880,000 and £890,000.
[email protected]Hidden talentsplans to publish
details of high earners “risk
undermining the ability of
institutions to compete in an
international market for academic
and professional services talent”GETTY
ALAMY