Michael Spence, Provost and President of UCL, was recently found to have claimed almost £5,500 in ‘expenses’ from trips taken by his wife, Seon Young “Jenny” Ihn, The Times revealed.
After delaying the release of the couple’s financial records for almost a year following a freedom of information request, Spence was forced to pay the amount back “in full” when the Information Commissioner's Office intervened and the extent of the issue came to light.
Ihn has no official position at UCL, instead being a PhD student at the Slade School studying “the materiality of colour”. Between September 2022 and May 2024, Ihn took four international trips. These included a "philanthropic engagement” with her husband in New York, and a “spouse programme” in Switzerland.
In all four cases, UCL paid for Ihn’s expenses: including travel, accommodation, and food. This is a clear breach of UCL’s own expense policy, which states that it will not cover “any costs relating to accompaniment by spouse”.
Internal correspondence reveals these expenses were consistently objected to by those within UCL, but senior staff overruled these concerns and approved the expenses regardless.
In June 2023, a member of the finance staff stated that Ihn’s flights to Switzerland could not be reimbursed, saying that “UCL doesn’t pay for the cost of partner travel”. However, another staff member replied that Ihn was “representing UCL”, and the expense claim was subsequently approved.
Concerns were raised again in August 2024, when Ihn had submitted a “business” expense for a £66 meal in Milan for her and her husband. The staff member defending the expense claimed that Ihn had helped to “co-host” a coffee meeting with a prospective donor, in which her role would have been “to be an advocate of the mission and ambitions of UCL”. The expense was then, again, approved.
This is not the first time that Spence’s financial expenses have come under scrutiny. When he was Vice-Chancellor at the University of Sydney - a role he lost to an overwhelming vote of no confidence - he reclaimed more than AUD$10,000 (£5,200) in membership fees to London’s Oxford and Cambridge Club.
Spence is currently the second-highest paid university head in the UK, sitting at a salary of more than £530,000 a year including benefits.
A UCL spokesperson replied to The Times’ article: “There have been occasions when the spouse of the UCL president and provost has joined them on trips to help raise income or develop partnerships.
“Since joining UCL in 2021, there have been just four trips over a five-year period where expenses have been claimed for Dr Spence’s wife. These were agreed and approved at the time.
“It has subsequently emerged that the wrong advice was provided and the expenses, worth £5,487.02 in total, have been paid back fully. Dr Spence has acted in good faith throughout and UCL apologises to him for this error.”