Wednesday 9 February 2011

Educationalists: we're all in this together

While Oxbridge shockingly decide to charge the full £9000 fees, vice-chancellors of other institutions play their part in the new Age of Austerity. While staff got a 0.4% pay rise for another year (effectively a large pay cut taking inflation into account) and casualisation erodes the chances of even the very brightest getting a permanent job, senior management carry on with the life of Reilly.

My own VC told us in a public meeting that she'd refuse a pay rise this year, but still took home an extra £7000, handily negating the inflation rate. But she's a model of propriety compared with the rather immodest antics of another VC according to the Guardian:

"Who is the university vice-chancellor whose contribution to the new austerity is to buy a third Range Rover," asked my colleague Mike White last week, setting the hounds a chasin'. "Their number plates are PhD 1, PhD 2 and, yes, PhD 3." This is the sort of challenge readers can't resist, so in came the emails. Dr David Grant, vice-chancellor of Cardiff University, they said: have a word with him. We tried, but his spokeswoman said: "The university has no comment regarding the vice-chancellor's private vehicle." She didn't say which vehicle. Does he own all three?
Grant takes home around £250,000 per year.

3 comments:

Sinéad said...

hmmm, i wonder if he has to pimp his talents as an after-hours tutor in order to get enough cash to fuel those range rovers. they're very expensive to run, i hear...

The Plashing Vole said...

Other Cardiff tutors are selling extra help for £30 per hour!

Sinéad said...

my point exactly... if the tutors need to supplement their income by selling out-of-hours tuition, then there's something deeply wrong with the head honcho honching around in not one, but a choice of 3, range rovers, with the most ludicrous vanity plates EVER.