Universities: Vice-Chancellors’ Pay

Lord Morgan Excerpts

Tuesday 12th September 2017 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

We do not believe that we are meddling; we are setting down a framework of how we are encouraging universities to operate. As this House will know, the Office for Students is being given extra remits to be able to set the framework to be sure that universities look at how they operate and how they manage a prudent operation.

[Lord Morgan (Lab)]

My Lords, I speak as a former vice-chancellor. Is it not lamentable that many vice-chancellors use as their defence a kind of cult of personality, with themselves as global superstars? This is at a time when the pay of the average university lecturer has been very poor, to the point that many of them have difficulties with professional mobility and housing, and when the unit of resource per student is going down and many lecturers have been made redundant. Should we not collectively, irrespective of party in this House, condemn this kind of approach and remind our vice-chancellors that universities are a team effort and that they depend on morale and the inculcation of values in which everyone can believe?