VC pay and the University Financial Statement

University accounts have been released for this year and contain headlines of increased staff productivity (record income, record grant capture) and increased student satisfaction along with major staff losses, a continuing grind-down on staff pay for most, but above-inflation rewards for top managers and surpluses in university accounts.  The message is clear:  We value what your hard work produces (for our own pay-packet benefits and for the fattening of our spreadsheet accounts), but not enough to prevent us from seeking to eliminate a large slice of the staff community or from continuing to press for reductions in staff pay.

• UP – Staff productivity: Record grant income was produced by staff, with an increase in research grants (page 67) of 11%;  Fee income increased by 21% (page 57); the students who brought in these fees will be served by the community of university staff.
• DOWN – Staff pay erosion:  Another year of below-inflation pay awards: A 1.4% pay award with CPI inflation currently at 3.5%, means the pay increase was less than half the rate of inflation and continues a more than decade-long period of pay decline.
• DOWN – Staff numbers:  University accounts report a loss of 238 members of staff through the VLS, and continued threats of redundancies are further reducing staff numbers (the latest threats are in biosciences – see below)
• UP – Executive pay increase:  The total remuneration package for the Vice Chancellor increased by 8.9% (2.5 times the rate of inflation)
• UP – High-salary employees:  The number of staff paid more than £100,000 increased by 31% this year (from 258 to 337).
• UP – The surplus generated by University of Birmingham in the past year was 6 million pounds.  While this is smaller than in some previous years, it does not reflect a university in financial trouble and requiring redundancies.  In fact, the university does not claim that their redundancy program is for financial reasons.

This is a picture of an institution with two different worlds. One world faces precarity and low pay awards, but produces large gains for the university community; A much smaller group harvests the benefits of the gains for themselves.