UCL’s Provost Michael Spence was paid just over half a million pounds last year, making him the third highest-paid university boss in the UK, according to documents revealed by i News last week.
The Provost was paid £509,849 in the 2022-23 academic year, a figure surpassed only by LSE and the University of Oxford, which paid its bosses £533,000 and £1,048,000 respectively.
According to the University’s 2022-23 financial statement, the Provost’s pay included a basic salary of £380,496, employer pension contributions of £82,187, and ‘taxable benefits in kind’ – the provision of living accommodation in Bloomsbury – worth £47,166 per year.
The financial statement also admitted that the Provost’s salary was nine times the ‘median total remuneration of staff’ but was viewed as ‘appropriate’ by the Remuneration Committee ‘considering UCL’s size, academic ranking, central London location and financial turnover in excess of £1.9 billion’.
This casual half-million undoubtedly feels like a slap in the face to both staff and students at UCL.
The Cheese Grater has previously reported that postgraduate teaching assistants (PGTAs) at UCL are paid less than their equivalents in other London universities and are sometimes paid late (CG 87), with detrimental effects on their quality of teaching.
Meanwhile, tuition fees for international students continue to rise every year as UCL makes no excuses for its intention to ‘re-examin[e] our policy on unregulated student fees’ to ‘meet market demand’, according to its 2022-27 Strategic Plan.
A UCL spokesperson said,
‘The salary of UCL’s President and Provost, Dr Michael Spence, has been benchmarked and set against other world-leading UK universities, including Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial.
‘In joining UCL in 2021 from Sydney University, Dr Spence took a pay cut so his salary is in line with these peer universities.
‘The Provost’s salary is set and adjusted by the Remuneration and HR Strategy Committee: a formal committee of UCL that includes the Chair and Vice-Chair of Council and excludes the Provost, and is published annually in our financial reports.’
This article appeared in the Digestive 3
