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Colleges and universities must come clean on senior staff pay rises, says UCU

18 February 2010

UCU today said that colleges and universities needed to be upfront about why so many more members of senior staff were now earning high salaries.

Analysis from the union revealed that the numbers of high-earning staff rose sharply between 2006-7 and 2007-8, while the number of front-line teaching staff only increased by a small amount.
 
The union said its concerns were not the politics of envy, but that it wanted clarification why, at a time when institutions in both sectors were using funding difficulties to justify axing staff, the wage bill for those at the top was increasing so much.
 
UCU general secretary, Sally Hunt, said: 'UCU is not against people being properly rewarded for jobs well done. However, we believe colleges and universities need to be upfront about why so many more people they now employ command such high salaries out of taxpayers' money. Especially when frontline staff are getting real terms pay cuts and thousands of jobs are at risk.'
 
In further education, the number of full-time equivalent teaching staff increased between 2006-7 and 2007-8 by 2.8%, while the number of highly paid staff, increased by 33.8%. In higher education there was a 3.4% increase in the number of full-time equivalent teaching staff, and a 20.9% increase in the number of staff paid £100,000 or more.
 
Institution heads continued to do exceptionally well when it came to their own pay packets. There was a 12.1% increase in the mean average basic pay of university vice-chancellors and principals and college principals continued to enjoy percentage pay rises more than twice that of front-line staff.

The full results can be downloaded below.

Last updated: 11 December 2015

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