The “dramatic” pay levels of university vice-chancellors in Northern Ireland, which see them earn twice as much as the First Minister, are demoralising for frontline staff, a trade union has said.
Ulster University’s VC Professor Paul Bartholomew has a salary of £263,000, with employer pension contributions of £57,000.
Meanwhile, the VC at Queen’s University, Professor Sir Ian Greer, gets £330,000 with pension contributions of £20,000.
That is more than double the salary of other top earners from the public purse in Northern Ireland.
Professor Ian Greer, Vice Chancellor, Queen’s University
Between 2022 and 2023, they both received pay rises, with Mr Bartholomew getting an increase of £10,000 and Mr Greer a boost of £15,000. The First and deputy First Ministers earn £124,500, while the head of the civil service is on a maximum of £202,239. Council chiefs here have an income ranging from £130,000 to £160,000 per year.
Pay for some health chiefs also pales in comparison to VCs with, for example, the Western Trust chief – responsible for 12,000 staff – earning £125,000–£130,000.
As Northern Ireland’s two main higher education institutions there are also record numbers of staff earning over £100,000. The number of UU employees earning £100,000+ has jumped from 19 in 2019 to 34 in 2023.
Over the same period at QUB staff members on more than £100,000 rose from 30 to 72.
UU’s UCU branch committee said: “Within UK higher education the dramatic levels of vice-chancellors’ pay over recent years has been problematic, particularly in light of the real terms 11% pay cut university staff have had to accept over the past two years, as well as the demoralising message inflated VC and senior leader salaries sends out to staff on the front line. Ulster University’s VC is paid £263,000 per year which is over six times the median salary within the university.”
A spokesperson for the trade union added: “For a number of UK universities, recent crises in funding have exposed the broken financial model underpinning the sector; a model where senior management seem to face no constraints on their pay and extensive new-build vanity projects drain the coffers, all at the expense of their employees.
“In order to safeguard the quality of teaching at Ulster, UCU expects the vice-chancellor to take a step away from this flawed model and redirect significant resources to support staff in frontline roles.”
UCU’s QUB branch was also contacted for comment.
Recently QUB confirmed it was set to cut up to 270 jobs — more than 5% of its workforce.
The university was said to be facing a deficit of more than £11m in 2024-25.
QUB has spent around £400m of its own money on capital projects over the past decade. Mr Bartholomew said he was supportive of a hike in tuition fees to over £9,000 in Northern Ireland, which is about double the current subsidised fees for local students studying at home.
In its budget, the Westminster government confirmed that tuition fees will rise to £9,535 in England next year, at a time when Taoiseach Simon Harris said university fees should be “phased out” in the Republic.
UU and QUB were contacted for a response.