Degrees in greed: University chief picked up £1m over four years (and nine others earned more than £300,000)

The head of a former technical college earned £1million in four years before taking early retirement while her institution spiralled into debt.

Professor Patricia Broadfoot, 62, was the highest paid university Vice-Chancellor in the UK last year, according to research revealing the pay, benefits and pensions of all higher education chiefs.

The study highlighted the ‘murky’ world of ‘arbitrary’ pay at Britain’s universities and showed that three-quarters of chiefs enjoyed a pay rise last year. Ten vice-chancellors earned more than £300,000 a year. In addition they received annual cash payments into their pension schemes of up to £60,000.

A handful of chiefs at low-ranking institutions, beset with financial troubles, have been granted massive and ‘utterly arbitrary’ pay rises of anything up to 70 per cent. Most disturbing was the amount paid to Professor Broadfoot who last year earned £494,000, including her pension, while presiding over little-known Gloucestershire University.

This sum included a £196,000 ‘pay-off’, equivalent to a year’s basic salary, after she stepped down last March, a year early. Her total earnings over four years were £1,088,000.

The mother of three was also criticised for profligate spending, at one point attempting to hire a personal chauffeur. During her tenure the institution – which became a university in 2001 after teaching mechanics since 1884 – tried to expand and over-invest as the recession took hold.

It plunged into debt and was placed on the ‘at risk’ register of universities threatened with closure or merging.Professor Broadfoot graduated from Leeds University in 1971 with a degree in sociology. Some 13 years later she got her PhD from the Open University.

She was one of five high-profile figures at the university to resign between 2009 and 2011. She was followed by the Chancellor, former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey.

Yesterday the university said it had recently recorded a surplus of £2million and was making a strong financial recovery.

Spokesman Paul Brake said: ‘The university has significantly improved its financial position by reducing costs and growing income through the hard work of staff.’ The research, commissioned for the Times Higher Education Supplement, revealed high levels of pay at other low-ranking universities.

Liverpool Hope boss Gerald Pillay saw his salary balloon by 20.6 per cent to £199,077 as some 110 of his staff face the axe.
Second-highest pay: Professor Andrew Hamilton of Oxford University earned £423,000.

Ninety per cent of the vice-chancellors at the 148 universities earn more than Prime Minister David Cameron’s £142,500 salary. However, 36 vice-chancellors did see their earnings fall. Overall their average pay and benefits rose by 0.5 per cent to £213,813.

The figures come as students face mountains of debt when fees increase to a maximum of £9,000. And with Aston University yesterday announcing it will charge £9,000, as Essex and Surrey did earlier this week, observers warn that all but a handful will charge the full amount.

The study also coincided with thousands of staff at more than 500 universities and colleges going on strike over pay and conditions.

Sally Hunt, of the University and College Union (UCU), called for reform of vice-chancellor pay. She said: ‘UCU members in universities are on strike today defending their pay and conditions and it is somewhat galling to discover that many vice-chancellors are still enjoying handsome, and utterly arbitrary, pay hikes.

‘We want an end to the murky world of pay at the top of our universities and a fair system applied consistently from top to bottom.

‘We have never opposed people being well rewarded for a job well done.

‘However, today’s survey does nothing to suggest that vice-chancellors’ pay is properly scrutinised or that the process for deciding an individual’s pay is fit for purpose.

‘Even after years of promising to rein in pay at the top, there are examples of whopping rises.’

The second highest paid Vice-Chancellor was Professor Andrew Hamilton of Oxford University who earned £370,000 before his pension of £53,000 – a total of £423,000. His predecessor Dr John Hood received £78,000 to cover his relocation costs – he sent belongings to New Zealand and America.

Gloucestershire University has appointed David Willetts’s right-hand man Stephen Marston, from the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills, as its new vice-chancellor.

From: http://www.dailymail.co.uk