AIBU to think university executives should not be paid so much that the uni can't afford lecturers

[melisande]

AIBU to expect that the uni my DS might go to should not pay their execs so much that they can't afford to pay lecturers and profs and are making them redundant: News story on cuts at Exeter; same thing happening at Hertfordshire and Sussex. Exeter UCU says that if the 16 highest paid execs at that uni capped their salary at £120k, they'd save more money than all the planned cuts to archaeology and history.

Who do you think the top execs are? They are vice chancellors, pro vice chancellors and deans all of whom are academic staff. And also why do you think that university execs don't deserve to be well paid? For the most part they are vastly experienced and respected professionals. Universities are not run by philosophy lecturers. If they were we'd all be in trouble. The issue is the lack of demand for arts and humanities subjects because of the high fees. Universities are forced to be financially independent so have a right to cut courses that make a loss. I'm not saying this isn't sad but it is sensible.

Higher education funding is a shitshow. The UK spends the second lowest amount of public funding on HE out of all OECD countries. This is a structural problem and while it’s tempting to trot out the “fat cat VCs” trope, their salaries are not the problem.

This has been brewing for a decade. Brexit, Covid and CoL crisis has accelerated it. Every single university in the UK has shed staff in the last 3-5 years. Exeter is no different.

If history and archaeology lecturers want to keep their jobs there needs to be enough students to pay for them.

Unpopular courses get cut all the time, even in countries where uni is free. It’s unreasonable to expect their colleagues to take a pay cut to keep lecturers employed in subjects people don’t want to study.

I agree that lazy narratives are no use, but if you read the article and read elsewhere, you'll see that they're cutting courses which have been recruiting very successfully, there isn't lack of demand, nor is the University of Exeter in any financial trouble. And if you ask employers, you'll see that they're keen to hire Humanities students because they have really good critical thinking and writing skills. The lazy narrative is that STEM subjects are the only 'useful' ones when the creative industries in the UK contributed £124 billion in gross value added (GVA) in 2023, accounting for 5.2% of the total UK economy and the sector has shown significant growth, outperforming the overall economy in recent years. And the UK university system itself has been a unique strength in the UK economy: the total economic impact of UK higher education was estimated at around £265 billion in the 2021–22 academic year - and that is* *currently being trashed by poor uni management, government inattention and populist politically motivated cuts to foreign students. In the first two months of 2026, 56,396 jobs were flagged at risk for redundancy in the sector, all this while the government is happy to shout about stepping in to save 1,500 jobs in the steel industry. And think about all the areas where the local university is a key employer, and central to the wider local economy. All of that is at risk if this continues.

I am so sad at what’s happening with universities and funding. How do we sort it out? Why do we need all these caps on foreign students? They seem to actually value UK universities and their degrees, unlike successive UK govs.. I don’t understand this mad anti intellectual culture that we seem to have just when we desperately need an educated workforce and nigher education has expanded so successfully. We’ve got more UK graduates than we’ve ever had, universities should be a success story. Why can’t we be proud of them and why can’t the gov support them?

DH friend works at The University of Nottingham and they are making 600 staff redundant. They have already had a round of voluntary redundancies as his friend wanted to apply but was a bit too young to take his pension. DH took redundancy from a different University around a year ago and he was a STEM Professor and head of department. His dept had to cut 3 posts and he was eligible for his pension so took it, between us we have 6 friends who have taken VR from three different Universities since 2021.

To give an indication of costs. A student damaged the lens of DH specialist microscope. It cost 30k to repair I’m unsure how much that microscope cost but it was in the hundreds of thousands. Controversial but tuition fees don’t cover costs at all. A lot over expanded and went mad with building works as well
Many people that move up in to the higher levels of University management are actually not good at it. They are academics and that means experts in an academic field it doesn’t mean they make good business decisions.

Having read the true-life exposé 'Porterhouse Blue' by Tom Sharpe I tend to agree with both sides of the augment

I hope that helps.

I agree it's all very complicated, but In 2024-2025 the base salary for VCs rose by 5% to £350,500 - in the context of university funding crises and real terms pay cuts for everyone else, this is not appropriate. And no, tuition fees don't remotely cover the costs of education, and many VCs have made poor decisions about investments and spending on expensive buildings - that's why universities need a new public funding model and proper attention from the government. However you look at it, the answer is not mass redundancies for staff.

You are SO not being unreasonable. I have had emails in the past month from eight different members of full time admin staff at a uni I teach at, asking me to design and run courses. None of the lecturers I know are full time. If they can afford 8 full time admin staff in one department, you'd think they could stretch to a few full time teaching staff posts.

Well said OP.

Universities can’t and shouldn’t wait until they are “in trouble” before making changes. They can see that unless they do something, operating costs will exceed income in a few short years. Exeter’s surplus is wafer thin as it is.

I read extensively on this topic as it is part of my profession. It does you no favours to cherry pick the information sources that suit your narrative.

Creative industries are indeed extremely valuable and as well as the points you make, a source of considerable soft power for the UK internationally. The government’s undermining of HE is exceptionally short sighted. It’s never been an election issue but perhaps you should raise it with your MP.

Some execs somewhere will have started as philosophy lecturers!
What's wrong with philosophy lecturers anyway??

Who do you think the top execs are? They are vice chancellors, pro vice chancellors and deans all of whom are academic staff. And also why do you think that university execs don't deserve to be well paid? For the most part they are vastly experienced and respected professionals. Universities are not run by philosophy lecturers. If they were we'd all be in trouble

Totally agree @Downplayit

Exeter are getting a lot of attention and whilst I agree with it, this sort of thing has been going on for years. Two years ago Huddersfield Uni axed most of their humanities lecturers, their English course now only has 2 lecturers for example. Made it to local news but not national. People only seem to care because it’s a Russell.

I’m an academic within humanities so I agree with you but it’s happening nationally, especially within A&H. VC’s are paid astronomical amounts and there’s way too many managers. Courses are being sliced and diced to nothing with lower student numbers blamed. Academics are forced to reinterview for their roles most years in some uni’s. At Huddersfield they ditched the professors and hired a lot of temp staff.

It’s a bleak situation. Some uni’s have fared better than others, particularly ones in large cities like Manchester.

They teach critical thinking and that’s dangerous.

Lecturers pay is also awful and really not kept up with other sectors. 38k starting salary going up to 43k. This is for a job which in the advert for the person spec says a PhD is required!

Can you imagine how hard it is to find lecturers for courses like architecture, paramedic studies, nursing, midwifery, etc when all those professions earn more than that!

Unpopular opinion, but a lot of "Business" type degrees from lower tier universities could be delivered via an online platform with just as good (or bad) outcomes for the student. This could be done for a couple of thousand per year with the student living at home. Thus saving a lot of money.

I expect this could be expanded to a lot of other courses (not STEM), but I am just highlighting the low hanging fruit.

Agree. I know some who go into lecturing later in life after a career in those very professions which makes sense. You don’t need a PhD if you have extensive professional experience in those areas. But you’re right, lecturing isn’t an appealing profession if you’re after money.

Some specialisms in FE are even worse off. They pay worse than both schools and industry. Try hiring a welder into an FE college when they earn double in industry.

Students largely don’t want to learn online, it wasn’t popular during the pandemic and I’d imagine still wouldn’t be. They go to uni often for the social aspect and experience, you don’t get that online. If they wanted that they’d just do open uni.

...automatic promotion to senior lecturer so potential earnings of £55k+, 54 days paid holiday a year, 24% employer contribution to salary...

It isn’t automatic. It happens after extensive positive teaching feedback, solid research output and other contributions such as leading modules. We don’t get 54 days AL. If by AL you mean Christmas and Easter breaks, we spend some of that marking, at conferences or researching.

This is so wrong it’s laughable.

I'm guessing you're not an academic if you think reducing a couple of senior salaries will save 150 jobs! The university sector in the UK is in a mess. That mess is not caused by senior leaders earning the money that they deserve and is appropriate for their level of expertise.

How depressing to think that business management degrees can be done online. No human interaction. No face to face experience. Where are they supposed to learn all the soft skills?