University Management Salaries
I have long believed that the hierarchical management structure of modern universities, especially in the UK and Ireland, is wrong and damaging. One aspect of this is the unjustifiably high salaries paid to the people at the very top. I can see no good reason for any university President, Vice-Chancellor, Rector, or whatever else their name is, to receive a salary above the standard scale for professors.
The problem with the high salaries these people get nowadays is not only the expense (which is considerable) but the fact that it sends out the message that they are much more important than they actually are and that the people who actually carry out the core work of a third-level institution – the academics and related staff – are mere subordinates. Moving into management should really be regarded as a sideways move, not an advance.
Incidentally, I would also argue that nobody should be employed in a senior management role in a university who neither teaches nor does research. How can someone who is not active in these areas know the reality of the situation facing staff who are?
Anyway, these thoughts came back into my mind after an informal chat with some people here in the ICC. It turns out that the salary of the Rector of the University of Barcelona, Joan Guàrdia Olmos, is in the public domain. It is made up from various components but the grand total is €124,619.58 (2022 figure). That would be well below the bottom level of the Professor A scale in Maynooth. Contrast that with the President of Maynooth University, Eeva Leinonen, who is paid a salary of €208,509, which is considerably higher than the top of the Professor A scale at Maynooth. Professor Leinonen also receives €13,500 benefit in kind for rent-free accommodation.
You can contrast these salaries with the respective institutions, both of which are public universities. The University of Barcelona has around 63,000 students and about 5000 staff; it is widely regarded as the top University in Spain (pop. 47 million). Maynooth University has about 15,000 students and about 900 staff; it is not regarded by anybody as the top University in Ireland (pop. 5 million).
I think you get the point.
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This entry was posted on November 10, 2023 at 1:59 pm and is filed under Barcelona, Maynooth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
In the Dark 
November 10, 2023 at 3:34 pm
While the difference is quite significant considering the size of the respective universities (and the responsibilities that come with that), it would be interesting to compare it to the level of salaries of professors in Spain. A quick search appears to give an average salary of a professor in Barcelona to be ~€66.000 so a bit more than half that of the rector. So that does not seem to be very different from Maynooth.
The difference with Spain seems to be only partly due to the difference in cost of living. The salaries in Ireland appear rather generous compared to Sweden for example.
That is of course not to say that I don’t agree with your point, especially with the point about the understanding of teaching and research.
November 10, 2023 at 3:59 pm
It’s true that professorial salaries in Ireland are generous, the term Professor is only applied to the top grades whereas in Spain it applies to everyone, including those who would be called Lecturer in Ireland.
November 10, 2023 at 4:19 pm
Looking at those payscales, I think a move from England to Ireland might be in order.
November 10, 2023 at 7:31 pm
The salaries in Ireland seem very generous. When last checked a Professor in London was ~94k. Of course fully agree with main point about Managers.
Even in Industry think Engineers should be more respected, as in Germany and other European countries, The managers in Industry can at least claim give Buisness nous to maximise profits, which is hardly case in research.
November 14, 2023 at 9:55 am
One of the justifications I often see for these salaries is that they are needed to prevent them being poached by industry. But oddly I only ever see senior managers move between different universities. Almost as if this is not true.
November 11, 2023 at 9:27 am
Do academics in Maynooth have a say in deciding management salaries? Some kind of revolutiuon is needed to sack these largely useless parasites on the body academic.
November 11, 2023 at 11:22 am
No. Academics have no say either in their salaries nor in how many of them are appointed.
November 11, 2023 at 6:22 pm
How did that come to be? It was not always so.
November 11, 2023 at 9:31 am
IMO, the salaries are incidental to this point:
“Incidentally, I would also argue that nobody should be employed in a senior management role in a university who neither teaches nor does research. How can someone who is not active in these areas know the reality of the situation facing staff who are?”
The problem in many UK universities is exactly as Peter has articulated.
The Vice Chancellor is surrounded by a coterie of advisers who have neither taught nor done research. They are people with backgrounds in management or law or public finance or HR — but not generally in lecturing or research. They are the Registrar, the Director of HR, the Director of Finance, the Academic Secretary, etc.
It is an important question (not asked by many academics): who really runs your University?
It is these people, who have no experience in the core duties of a university.
That is why we get repeated, really stupid decisions from senior management.