Statistics on Higher Education

Academic Salaries

As the recent lecturers’ strikes in the spring/summer of 2006 demonstrates, the issue of academic pay remains contentious. The Association of University Teachers argued that lecturers' salaries had fallen in real terms over the past 20 years, despite increases in productivity and teaching workloads.

According to the Office of National Statistics (ONS), the average annual earnings of

full-time ‘higher education teaching professionals’ were £40,657 in 2005 – this is up from £35,949 in 2004.

The minimum starting salary for a lecturer in a university is £24,352, with most starting higher up the scale. Senior Lecturers’ pay rises to £47,262 (or £44,328 in post-1992 institutions). Professors earn between £44,818 and £200,000 per annum.

The AUT assert that about 1 in 12 of academic staff employed in higher education earn more than £50,000 a year.

Despite increases in UK academic salaries, they remain behind most other OECD countries. The average starting salary of a US Assistant Professor was between £26,700–£30,000 in 2003, according to the US Department of Education Centre for Education Statistics. For Professors, the salary range was far higher, particularly in Ivy League institutions where professorial stipends averaged between £77,000–£94,000, with many senior academics, particularly those at the top of their fields, earning far more.

Average salaries vary between UK HEIS, as the table below, from HESA demonstrates.

Average salaries among full-time academic staff (including clinical staff) in UK universities 2002-03 (Russell Group) ££

There is no question that UK academic salaries lag behind their US counterparts. What ever one’s views on whether or not ‘brain drain’ is a problem, the simple fact is that an academic in a given department would earn nearly twice his salary were he to apply for and be awarded a similar position in America. Furthermore, the trend is for this gap to widen; Greenaway and Haynes demonstrate this:

Figure 1

But what is perhaps more troubling for UK academics is the fact that they, along with Australia, are paid a smaller percentage of Educational Expenditure than any other OECD country except the Czech Republic. The percentage gap between, for instance, the UK and Ireland, or the UK and Luxembourg, might be accounted for by the greater overall figure which is poured into the system for research in the UK, but this is not true of the US or Canada.

Figure 2

And what is perhaps most disturbing of all for UK academics is that their salaries have failed to keep pace with both the remainder of the private sector, and with the public sector as well. The real purchasing power of an academic in the UK has fallen by somewhere around 30% on the pay index between the years 1981 and 1998. Again Greenaway and Haynes demonstrate this:

Figure 3

Vice Chancellor’s Pay

In contrast to academic salaries in relative decline, the salaries of Vice-Chancellors have risen in recent years, as they adopt more of a CEO-role in HEIs. The recent THES survey shows that nearly all VC’s earn over £100,000 per year, with the majority earning half that again.

The highest-earning VC is Professor Laura Tyson, Dean of the London Business School, who earned £310,000 in 2004/5. Second, Sir Richard Sykes, Rector of Imperial College London, earned £305,000.

At the other end of the table, Professor Gerald Pillay, Vice-Chancellor and Rector of Liverpool Hope University, earned £119,948, and University of Wales Lampeter VC Robert Pearce, £107,000.

In the USA, whilst President of Harvard University, Lawrence Summers earned in excess of $500,000 a year, and Yale President Richard Levin earned over $715,000.

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