Follow the money, as they say. Via AFR:
University vice-chancellors’ pay is “ridiculous” compared to their overseas counterparts and COVID-19 has exposed the inability of most of them to deliver the performance that would be expected if they were earning the same money in the private sector, say two leading business academics.
Professors Tom Smith and James Guthrie from Macquarie University Business School said the average pay of Australia’s 39 vice-chancellors – the university equivalent of a chief executive – is $985,000, compared to just $670,000 in the US and $635,000 in the UK.
“Chief executives are paid for their business acumen. That is their vital ingredient and they have training to get it. They generate strategic direction and that equals value creation,” said Professor Smith who is the head of the Department of Applied Finance at Macquarie University.
Good one. Australian vice-chancellors are paid so highly for one reason only: for a flexible ethical outlook. Why?
Because the international student trade in Australia has had a frighteningly deleterious impact on pedagogy as:
- Chinese students shut down free speech;
- Confucious Institutes openly teach CCP propaganda;
- those students and academics not toeing the line of ‘Xi Jinping thought’ are persecuted from campus;
- cheating is allowed to run wild;
- insufficient language requirements are allowed;
- local students are forced to teach foreign via group asignments;
- pedagogical standards tumble.
In short, Australian vice-chancellors are no different to bankers in the GFC. They are arbitraging their own institution’s good health for short term personal gain.
The high salary is the bribe that assuages any angst in this regard. Clearly, the salaries should be crushed by via regulation.
He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.
- CCP instructs media on how to report Aussie trade war on itself - January 15, 2021
- US politics is setting course for better not worse - January 15, 2021
- Ghost Melbourne permanent - January 15, 2021
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Amen.
Every time I get my letter in the mail from my alma mater asking for a donation to whatever shrine to someone’s ego they’re building, I ask them how much the VC has contributed personally.
They continue to send them. That penny sure isn’t dropping.
This certainly shows that our VC’s are much smarter than their overseas counterparts, they may be ripping us off but as DLS has alluded to it is our government that is the problem.
I ask them to get more money from their rich foreign $tudent$
Tie their pay to the private sector…
Oh…wait
Yes better retract that otherwise things will get more out of hand than they already are.
The Government, as the primary funder through explicit contribution and through underwriting HECS/HELP as well as the visa environment which enables international students should EASILY be able to regulate VC salaries.
E.g. Any university requiring students to access HECS needs to cap all administrative salaries at $X.
Seconded +1
‘Corporate Australia has taken these instructions over. Look at who is on the board of GO8 universities. It is bankers/biz types. They have bought their corrupt practices with them.