Two of Victoria’s top university leaders continued to receive million-dollar remuneration packages and pay rises in 2021, despite their campuses recording student satisfaction levels below the national average.
As universities recovered from multiple COVID-19 lockdowns and loss of international student enrolments last year, the remuneration for most university vice chancellors remained steady or fell. But the pay packages for the vice chancellors of Melbourne and Monash universities stayed above $1 million.
Melbourne University recorded the lowest score in Australia in The Student Experience Survey in 2021. Credit:Wayne Taylor
According to the 2021 Student Experience Survey, commissioned by the federal government, the University of Melbourne was the lowest ranked for student satisfaction in the country, with a 63.1 per cent overall positive student approval rating. RMIT followed with a rating of 66.9 per cent.
A University of Melbourne spokesman said while the rating was still a 10 per cent increase on the previous year, the disappointing results “make it clear that we need to step up” to improve the engagement of students.
In Victoria, which had the most COVID lockdowns in the country, six of the state’s eight universities were below the national benchmark of overall student satisfaction in 2021.
Swinburne University’s vice chancellor was also paid above the $1 million mark after a dip in 2020. But students there returned a 75 per cent overall satisfaction rating in the survey.
The undergraduate student experience at Monash University rose by 9.6 per cent to 70 per cent in 2021, but was still below the national average of 73 per cent.
Monash attributes some of the rise in satisfaction from 2020 to investment in their “digital platforms, education and teaching” as well as new initiatives to support students during the pandemic.
Of the 265,000 domestic students who responded to the national survey, 73 per cent were satisfied with their overall educational experience – up from 68.4 per cent in 2020 – which the survey attributed to a post-pandemic return to on-campus learning.
All Victorian universities recorded an increase in satisfaction from 2020, Deakin University recorded the highest positive student approval rating in Victoria.
Higher education academic at the Australian National University, Professor Andrew Norton, said some vice chancellors took pay cuts during COVID-19 as universities shed thousands of jobs, and “internal politics dictated university leaders had to participate in the pain”.
“Vice chancellors have an extremely tough job, but $1 million-plus pay is in excess of the prime minister and departmental secretaries who have equally high-pressured and demanding jobs,” Norton said. “It’s one of the drivers of resentment. There has been no major change over a number of years.”
In August 2021, the University Chancellors Council unveiled a voluntary code to benchmark salaries of university vice-chancellors against top public servants in a bid to make it more transparent.
But Macquarie University Emeritus professor James Guthrie said that based on his examination of 2021 annual reports, no universities had adhered to the codes when it came to “transparency, incentive plans, remuneration committees and performance reviews”.
Guthrie said it was “impossible” to determine actual vice-chancellors’ remuneration from annual reports because public universities were not forced to disclose remuneration in the way ASX-listed companies were. He called for transparency.
In 2021, the University of Melbourne’s Duncan Maskell received a remuneration package of between $1.45 million to $1.46 million – one of the biggest in Victoria and the second largest in Australia. It was, however, a reduction from his package in 2020 of between $1.5 million and $1.51 million.
A Melbourne University spokesman said Maskell’s package included salary, superannuation and “the value of the benefit” of the university-owned residence where he lives, which was $298,758 in 2021. He said it was reported in the remuneration package for tax purposes.
“The vice chancellor’s salary has not increased since he started at the University of Melbourne in October 2018. Nor does he receive any bonuses,” he said.
Monash University’s Margaret Gardner received Victoria’s second-highest remuneration package of between $1.22 million and $1.22 million, (down from 2020’s package which was between $1.3 million and 1.4 million). Swinburne’s Professor Pascale Quester received the third highest, between $1.05 million to $1.05 million, which was up 5 per cent from 2019 and bumped RMIT from the top three.
National Tertiary Education Union Victorian assistant secretary Sarah Roberts linked the University of Melbourne’s low satisfaction results in the Student Experience Survey scores to “insecure work” for staff and a “culture of excessive workload and working hours”.
“Staff employment conditions are student learning conditions,” she said.
The Fair Work Ombudsman is taking the University of Melbourne to court over allegations of underpayment of casual academics.
Federal Education Minister Jason Clare said the survey showed student experience was starting to improve, but there was more work to be done.
“The worst of COVID is hopefully behind us, but its impact on students is still here and you can see it in the data,” he said.
With Daniella White
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