by JAMES GUTHRIE

Calculating Vice Chancellors’ salaries and senior executive remuneration in Australian public sector universities is challenging.

I have reviewed over 6,000 pages of Australian public universities’ 2021 annual reports and financial statements to extract the information in the table below.

I searched for actual salary disclosures and then disclosures via bands. That is, something ending with 999 or 000 would usually be a band. These bands are set by the “owners” of public universities, that is, state and territory governments. This is done for transparency in terms of remuneration of senior public employees.

In interpreting the table, we need to be wary of changing vice-chancellor employment over the three years as this distorts remuneration. For instance, a vice-chancellor may start in May and have eight months of remuneration recorded. There were 22 changes to vice-chancellor appointments in these three years.

In August 2021, the University Chancellors Council (UCC) released a voluntary code to benchmark the salaries of university vice-chancellors and promised to benchmark senior executive salaries in public universities. The Australian Universities Vice-Chancellor and Senior Staff Remuneration Code 2021 states that:

“It is recognised that transparency is an important part of good practice remuneration ensuring that decision bodies, processes and outcomes are openly explained and presented to all stakeholders.”

Embedded in the code is the requirement that vice-chancellors be held to account for performance and that their base remuneration should be appropriate for the role and related to their institution’s successful delivery of financial and non‐financial goals. Additional short and long-term “at risk” remuneration may be offered but always against clear, measurable targets to be delivered over and above the base remuneration.

There has been no publicly available information; we have seen none of this activity. In examining the public university annual reports for 2021, there are no disclosures per the voluntary code. The only disclosure of vice-chancellors’ remuneration I found that was not in the financial statements and bands was that of  Western Sydney University as follows:

“Professor Barney Glover AO, Position: Vice-Chancellor and President Total Remuneration Package: $988,380 Period in Position: Full Year, Results: Met all objectives”. Performance objectives and targets are not further identified.

Turning to the highest paid vice-chancellor in Australia, The University of Melbourne’s Professor Duncan Maskell’s salary is $1,469,999, a pay cut of $44,000 from 2020. He is also the Director of the Grattan Institute, Melbourne Business School and the Melbourne Theatre Company, a board member of the Group of Eight and Universities Australia, a non-executive director of CSL Limited, and an ex-officio member of the university’s companies and controlled entities. While any remuneration for board memberships is not disclosed, non-executive directors of large publicly listed companies such as CSL can receive in the vicinity of $1,000,000.

If universities are indeed publicly owned and operate in the public interest, then greater transparency and accountability about vice-chancellors’ salaries are necessary.

The UCC should act on its code. It should oversee and administer appropriate and transparent remuneration of vice-chancellors and senior staff. The time for the UCC to talk about transparency is over ‒ it should act now, given that universities are engaged in enterprise bargaining and have seen significant staff cuts. The UCC needs to make good on its promise to “… support member Universities in this transition through:

* provision of best practice templates for the reporting of remuneration.

* sharing experiences of implementation and ongoing refinement of governance and reporting.

* provision of sector wide vice chancellor and senior remuneration data by the UCC including a sector annual report distributed to all members.

* report annually (Q2) each year on adoption of the UCC code.

* biennially review the effectiveness and currency of this code.”

The University Chancellors Council must act now to deliver on the purpose of the code.

Emeritus Professor James Guthrie AM, Professor of Accounting, Macquarie Business School

 

Institution	State	2019 Gross salary AUD	2020 Gross salary AUD	2021 Gross salary AUD
Australian Catholic University	Multiple	1,359,999	1,349,999	1,089,999*
Australian National University	ACT	649,396	559,973	609,676
Central Queensland University	QLD	779,998*	779,999	884,999
Charles Darwin University	NT	564,999	1,184,999	629,990*
Charles Sturt University	NSW	889,998	568,656	800,000*
Curtin University	WA	990,000	580,000	650,000*
Deakin University	VIC	829,999*	949,999	859,999
Edith Cowan University	WA	890,000	910,000	890,000
Federation University Australia	VIC	889,999	559,999*	839,999
Flinders University	SA	1,179,999	1,229,999	1,229,999
Griffith University	QLD	864,999*	879,999	1,029,999
James Cook University	QLD	989,999	959,999	899,999
La Trobe University	VIC	980,000	889,999	889,999
Macquarie University	NSW	1,089,000	1,059,999	1,059,999
Monash University	VIC	1,289,999	1,319,999	1,129,999
Murdoch University	WA	1,000,000	1,010,000	CND*
Queensland University of Technology	QLD	1,189,999	1,209,999	1,079,999
RMIT University	VIC	999,999	1,099,999	CND*
Southern Cross University	NSW	779,999	569,999*	749,999
Swinburne University of Technology	VIC	1,009,999	777, 000*	709,999
The University of Adelaide	SA	1,104,999	939,999	CND*
The University of Melbourne	VIC	1,499,999	1,514,999	1,469,999
The University of New England	NSW	639,999*	699,999	679,999
The University of Newcastle	NSW	859,999	869,999	869,999
The University of Notre Dame Australia	WA	619,999	659,999*	CND
The University of Queensland	QLD	1,214,999	974,999*	1,214,999
The University of Sydney	NSW	1,620,778	1,530,857	1,169,999*
The University of Western Australia	WA	959,999	979,000*	923,000
University of Canberra	ACT	979,999	539,999*	949,999
University of Divinity	VIC	269,999	229,999	309,998
University of New South Wales	NSW	1,329,999	1,449,999	1,515,000
University of South Australia	SA	1,269,998	1,202,000	1,219,000
University of Southern Queensland	QLD	689,999	719,999	719,999
University of Tasmania	TAS	1,079,998	1,079,998	989,999
University of Technology Sydney	NSW	1,099,999	1,099,999	1,079,999*
University of the Sunshine Coast	QLD	849,999	579,999*	929,999
University of Wollongong	NSW	1,209,998	1,269,998	799,998*
Victoria University	VIC	719,999*	849,999	819,999
Western Sydney University	NSW	1,009,999	969,999	988,380

Source: 2019-2021 Annual and Financial Reports

Note 1:  salary bands were disclosed in  annual reports, the high end of the pay has been used for the table

Note 2: the majority of universities disclosed vice chancellor salary under the section “Remuneration of Executive Officers/Key Management Personnel”. Unless the report stated otherwise, it was assumed that VCs were not entitled to additional remuneration due to also being a council member.

Note 3: * represent years in which the VC may have not served for the full calendar year. Those highlighted  affects year-to-year remuneration comparisons,  assumption that the year’s highest remunerated officer was the VC.

Note 4: CND means cannot determine