I have just been disgusted to see that Dame Glynis Breakwell, the VC of Bath University, is taking home £451,000 a year!!

As someone who spent a little less than half their career in Industry, and a little more than half their career in a University (Professor of Photonics at the University of Southampton for 23 years) I think I am fully qualified to comment on this vulgar Dame Glynis Breakwell revelation.

 In “business” I have seen the CEO and the company chairman raking in huge salaries for doing 2/3rds of bugger-all, whilst the people that do actually make the company work, slog on with mediocre pay. And as our Universities have slowly morphed into “businesses” we are of course seeing exactly the same thing happening there. It is the Academics that do the teaching AND bring in the grant money – not the Administrators. The Academics themselves could very easily handle the University administration (they do most of it anyway), and if not a full teaching academic, then an academic nearing the end of their career who would like to remain within the Ivory Towers for their last few working years. Similarly it would make sense if the Vice-Chancellor was an academic of the University who has been there man and boy (OK woman and girl if you really must) – then they might actually be able to make more sensible, more well-informed decisions regarding THEIR University than some plonker pulled out from a totally unrelated “business” on the other side of the planet.