Record handout makes outgoing v-c Australia’s highest paid

The head of Australia’s third smallest public university was the country’s highest paid vice-chancellor last year, pocketing about A$1.785 million (£910,000) – an apparent record in a sector renowned for its outsized executive salaries.

The 2023 income of the outgoing boss of the University of Canberra (UC), Paddy Nixon, was 71 per cent higher than his 2022 pay and 83 per cent higher than the final-year package awarded to his predecessor Deep Saini in 2019.

It is easily the biggest vice-chancellor’s pay packet of the past five years, eclipsing the A$1.621 million awarded in 2019 to the University of Sydney’s Michael Spence and the A$1.565 million handed to the long-serving boss of Australia’s biggest university, Monash’s Margaret Gardner, who resigned last year to become Victorian governor.

It is over A$500,000 more than the final-year earnings of veteran vice-chancellor Peter Coaldrake, who pocketed A$1.265 million in the last of his 15 years at Queensland University of Technology.

Rich rewards: Australia’s highest-paid vice-chancellors

Source: University financial accounts. *Left during year

Professor Nixon’s resignation “for personal reasons” was revealed by UC via embargoed media release on 17 January, 15 months before his five-year term was due to expire. The university’s recently published annual report says that he resigned at least a month earlier.

The report offers no explanation for Professor Nixon’s departure. “I know that I am leaving UC in very good hands,” his introductory statement says. In an email to UC staff, new chancellor Lisa Paul denied suggestions in the Canberra Times that the former vice-chancellor had attracted a special termination payout.

“Professor Nixon received payment for salary and accrued entitlements, as per contractual arrangements,” said the email from Ms Paul, a long-serving former head of the federal Education Department. “There was no ‘golden handshake’.”

But the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) said Professor Nixon’s remuneration package raised “serious questions” about UC’s governance. “We were told the previous vice-chancellor resigned for personal reasons, but this figure suggests a significant payout,” said Lachlan Clohesy, secretary of the NTEU’s Australian Capital Territory division. “We call on UC to justify Paddy’s package.”

Times Higher Education understands that Professor Nixon was informed that his services were no longer required during a university leadership retreat late last year. Asked for details about his entitlements and the circumstances of his departure, UC said it could not respond by publication deadline.

THE also sought an interview with Professor Nixon via his new employer, a Canberra technology start-up founded by a former UC adjunct associate professor, but received no response.

University governance came under the spotlight of the recent higher education review, the Universities Accord, with the federal government vowing to improve it. An “expert governance council” has been enlisted to develop principles in 10 “priority areas”, including executive remuneration.

Dr Clohesy said executive pay at Canberra would “justifiably attract the attention of federal and territory governments”. UC will not be alone, a THE analysis suggests, with financial accounts showing that the average vice-chancellor’s pay across the 38 taxpayer-funded universities – 36 public institutions, the Australian Catholic University and the University of Notre Dame Australia – cracked seven figures for the first time last year.

Nineteen university bosses pocketed A$1 million-plus pay packets. The average package across the 38 institutions reached A$1,020,335, up from a pre-pandemic peak of A$991,234 in 2019.

These figures can appear deceptively large, encompassing things like accrued leave and the nominal value of housing. The UC vice-chancellor’s package, for example, includes an on-campus residence that the incumbent is obliged to make available for university events.

Nevertheless, UC paid its vice-chancellor one dollar of every A$216 of its revenue last year, compared with an average of a dollar of every A$1,092 earned by other universities’ leaders.

NTEU president Alison Barnes said Australian vice-chancellors’ salaries contrasted starkly with workers’ conditions in a sector where underpayment was rife, workloads risked staff health and two-thirds of employees were insecurely employed.

“We need urgent governance reform to rein in these huge salaries and [apply] some accountability,” Dr Barnes said.

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com