The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Plymouth has seen her pay packet swell by more than £6,000 to £288,676 with 11 other staff paid more than £100,000 a year.
But Professor Judith Petts received a slightly lower pay increase in 2019/20 and a more prudent university has again cut the number of staff pocketing a six-figure package.
New figures contained in the university’s recently published accounts show that Professor Judith Petts received a salary of £271,273 for 2019/20 but with pension and other benefits on top.
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It meant her overall remuneration was up from and remains almost seven times the average, median, amount of £42,000 paid to other university staff.
However, the university said Prof Petts, in post since 2016, is worth every penny because she runs a huge and complex organisation with about 2,500 staff and about 35,000 students, of which 18,000 are in Plymouth, and has seen the institution rise up key league tables.
Prof Petts also oversaw the university returning to profit in 2019/20, with an after-tax surplus of £4.1million, after posting a loss of £17million a year earlier.
She is, in addition, steering through a huge Campus Masterplan development, with includes a new medical centre at a revamped Intercity House and an engineering and design block in the refurbished Babbage building.
And the professor, also the university’s chief executive, was praised in the university’s for her “continuing contribution to the economic, social and cultural life of the region and beyond”.
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It is also stressed that Prof Petts earns less than 75% of VCs at similar sized universities, and her 1.8% pay rise – reduced from the 2% award she received in 2018/19 - was in line with that given to other senior University of Plymouth staff.
However, all this comes as the university saw staff numbers slashed in a bid to claw back expenditure on wages with 566 employees leaving during 2018 and 2019 and a further 44 going in the 2019/20 year.
Students are also disgruntled about the effect coronavirus restrictions are having on their education. A group called while not receiving face-to-face teaching during the third national lockdown.
It is calling for rents on student digs to be cancelled for the first term of 2021 while severe Covid restrictions are in place.
The university’s latest set of accounts also shows that in addition to Prof Petts a further 11 university staff, including members of the University Executive Group (UEG), are paid more than £100,000 a year.
The accounts reveal one person received between £170,000 and £174,999, another between £160,000 and £164,999, and another between £130,000 and £134,999.
They are not named in the report, but the UEG includes three Deputy Vice-Chancellors: Prof Julian Chaudhuri, Prof Dafydd Moore and Prof Jerry Roberts.
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It also includes registrar Gordon Stewart, chief financial officer Alistair Matthews, and executive deans Prof Sube Banerjee, Prof David Finkelstein and Prof Kevin Jones.
In total, the members of the UEG received £1,686,000 between them, up from £1,675,000 the year before but still down on £1,835,000 paid in 2017/18. The number of staff paid more than £100,000, excluding the VC, also fell to 11 from 12 a year earlier and 17 in 2017/18.
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Senior staff wages are decided by the university’s Reward and Remuneration Committee and the annual report said it “considers a variety of factors” when deciding remuneration for the University Executive Group and other senior management staff which includes comparative benchmarking data for similar sized institutions, the national pay award for other university staff, financial sustainability, individual performance, organisational performance, internal equity and external market factors.
It said that in considering pay for the VC in November 2019, the committee considered that Prof Petts was “performing at a high level, providing clear leadership to the university in a challenging context resulting from the wide range of external factors impacting on the HE sector.”
But it explained: “Given the financial context within which the university was operating and the agreed national pay award for 2019/20, it was agreed that the Vice-Chancellor’s pay would increase by 1.8% - the same level as that for other senior staff and in line with the national pay award.”
Nationally, VCs’ pay has been a contentious issue, with the higher education regulator’s first survey, reported in early 2019, revealing six English universities paid their VCs at least £500,000.
Nearly half received more than £300,000, the Office for Students (OfS) discovered, with average pay for top staff, not including added benefits, rising by 3.5% to £253,000. The study also found more than 60% of universities increased the number of staff paid at least £100,000 in 2017/18.