While the average Australian student on Youth Allowance is ‘living it up’ below the poverty line on $29 per day, spare a thought for Monash University Vice-Chancellor Ed Byrne whose salary was slashed from $1.1million per year in 2011 to a mere $960,000 for 2012 and 2013.
Seriously though, let’s think about this. That’s an average yearly wage of just over $1million since 2011. While two-thirds of Australian university students are experiencing what researchers describe as “increasing financial stress” and living on a mean annual income of $18, 634, Byrne is making over fifty times this amount.
What’s more, Byrne’s mates in University Senior Management will be paid average salaries of around $350,000 in 2013. Given that total student enrolments across Monash campuses is over 70,000, and given that total number of staff employed in any one year is 18,000, Byrne and Co. probably rank in the top 0.01% of our community in terms of remuneration.
Byrne is the second highest paid University VC in Australia (just missing out on 1st place to Macquarie University’s VC who raked in an extra $80k in 2012). In 2011 he took home more money in 12 months than an average University Cleaner or Tutor earns in 27 years.
On an average income of $18, 634, it would take a full-time student 51 years to accumulate Byrne’s 2012 salary of $960,000, in which time they will simultaneously incur a $1million dollar HECs debt!
If we generously assume Byrne works a six day week in 2013, that equates to $3,076 per day. Furthermore, if we generously assume that he works 12 hours a day that means he is paid $256 per hour.
If we take an average over 2011, 2012 and 2013, Byrne’s annual pay packet of $1million is more than double that of the Australian Prime Minister (now $500,000 per year), more than triple Australia’s highest earning professions such as surgeons and anaesthetists (approximately $300,000 per year), and more than quadruple the amount paid to some of Monash University’s top academic/teaching Professors who earn approximately $180,000 per year.
And the big bucks are not reserved only for the VC. Byrne’s buddies in the Senior Management team including Chancellor Alan Finkel, Chief Operating Officer Peter Marshall, Chief Financial Officer David Pitt and Pro-Vice Chancellor David Copolov to name a few, enjoy annual pay cheques of anywhere between $140,000 to $770,000 in total remuneration.
These Senior Management salaries eclipse the average yearly wages of most academic staff at our University. On average, lecturers take home approximately $89,000 a year, and tutors – most working on casual contracts – are lucky to earn between $25,000 and $50,000 per year.
VC and Senior Management salaries make average student incomes in casual wages and welfare support payments look like parking meter change.
In 2012 alone, total remuneration for all 51 Senior Managers cost our University community $18,423,950. That’s eighteen
million, four-hundred and twenty-three thousand, nine-hundred and fifty Australian taxpayer/international and indebted domestic student dollars!
And the $18.4million Senior Management figure does not even include Byrne’s salary which is accounted for as part of ‘Director Remunerations’ (‘Directors’ defined as members of University Council) who cost our University an additional $1.85million in 2012 and another $1.82million in 2011.
On top of this there are the salaries of ‘Controlled Entity’ Directors and Executives (such as the senior managers of Monash Colleges, Monash Sport or Halls of Residence) who cost our University a further $4million per year.
In total, Senior Management/Director/ Executive salaries cost our University community $24,315,673 in 2012 alone.
Moreover, these figures, published in the Monash University 2012 Annual Report, do not include some of the additional perks senior Managers surely take advantage of on a regular basis such as free-parking permits, free-printing allowances, travel expenses, meals and accommodation in fancy hotels, superannuation contributions etc.
Furthermore, for these Senior Managers, their University salaries form only part of their overall income as many also have substantial private interests and shares in corporate business ventures on the side which probably rake in additional millions of dollars.
Given the mind boggling payouts for senior University Administrators like Byrne and Co., questions arise as to just how ‘in touch’ these managers are with the communities they purport to lead and serve.
While Byrne has not yet responded to my enquiries, ‘Chief Operating Officer’ and ‘Secretary of the Selection and Remuneration Committee’ Peter Marshall has told me that “Monash University is Australia’s largest university and one of the largest universities in the world. It carries an annual expenditure budget of more than $1.8 billion and employs more than 18,000 staff in any one year; these combine to support the studies of more than 70,000 students; it is one of Victoria’s and Australia’s largest public institutions … the Vice-Chancellor’s remuneration needs to be structured to attract and retain a Vice- Chancellor (who is required under the Monash University Act to be responsible for the university’s affairs in all matters) capable of leading and being responsible for such significant public assets”.
Frankly, I don’t find this argument very persuasive at all.
On the one hand Marshall claims that Monash University is “one of Victoria’s and Australia’s largest public institutions” and a ‘significant public asset”, and yet on the other he explains that “The Council Committee that sets the remuneration of the Vice-Chancellor carries out extensive and detailed comparative work with similar leadership roles in the private and higher education sector, before setting the Vice-Chancellor’s remuneration.”
If Monash is a public institution, established under an act of democratic government to serve the public good, why are its senior managers and VC being remunerated at a rate comparative to private sector leadership roles?
How is it in the public interest that a University like Monash attracts and retains individuals who are motivated primarily by massive salaries? And how much work can any one person actually be doing on a day-to-day, hour-to-hour, minute-to-minute basis to be worth so much money in wages as the VC and his Senior Management mates are being paid?
Do we, as a University community, really need to be paying a figurehead $1million per year? Is it unreasonable to expect that the role might be undertaken for just a little less?
And do we need to be paying Senior Managers an average salary of $361,253 while lecturers are paid $89k and casual tutors are lucky to make $50k? What does this say about how we really value teaching, researching and learning within our University community?
Is a 50% pay cut for the 51 Senior Managers now on $140-770,000 per year out of the question? Even a 75% reduction would still mean that Senior Managers would be paid about $110,000 per year.
Just think about what we as a university community could do with the annual savings of just over $12million…
‘Aye there’s the rub’, as Shakespeare would say. Because we staff and students do not actually have a formal say in what our University’s Vice Chancellor is paid, let alone who he or she will be following Byrne’s recent announcement that he’s leaving us for King’s College in London. We don’t get a say in whether we even need to maintain the position in its current form at all. Nor do we have a say in how much Senior Management are paid, who should fill those positions, or again, whether those positions are entirely necessary.
Byrne’s VC salary, and the salaries of his administrator colleagues, is set by the ‘Selection & Remuneration Committee’ which is composed of … you guessed it … the VC, the aforementioned Finkel and Marshall, and, according to its policy:
‘At least three members of [University] Council who are not employees of the university and who have relevant business, human resource management or financial experience.’
In other words, equally or more rich, corporate University Council appointees decide how much their appointed colleagues will be paid.
Brilliant.
Sir John Monash, the namesake of our University, once said: “…equip yourself for life, not solely for your own benefit but for the benefit of the whole community.”
If Sir John were alive today, I wonder what he might have thought about the current salaries of the VC and Senior Management.
