The University Chancellors Council (UCC) of Australia has released a new code, putting pressure on universities to dig out executives’ salaries and align these with “society’s expectations and norms.”
The council urges the universities to be transparent about senior staff’s base earnings, additional incentives, and bonuses through reporting obligations that address each university’s senior team or highest-paid staff.
Key Takeaways:
- The University Chancellors Council (UCC) released a new code for Australian universities.
- The newly developed code urges universities to be transparent about their remuneration reports.
- The decision to publicly disclose the information is still pending.
In 2019, Australian vice-chancellors’ average salaries increased by about AU$1 million (£530,000), considerably higher than their counterparts in New Zealand and the United Kingdom. While most vice-chancellors have also suffered from salary cuts due to the pandemic, remuneration levels have started “levelling out” prior to the public health crisis.
The main change in the newly developed code concerns the consistent reporting of the details of vice-chancellors’ salaries. Australian universities were also responsible for reviewing executives’ salaries and keeping track of their overall performance.
It can be noted that the UK and U.S. university sectors have also adopted increased levels of disclosure of such details. With this, the council pressed the universities to publish salary and performance information in institution annual reports.
While the council has yet to develop a sworn best-practice template for the reports on salaries, the UCC has pointed out the need to support universities in determining the appropriate remuneration, producing annual reports, and executing a semiannual effectiveness review.
However, officials have yet to decide if they will disclose the information to the general public.
According to Flinders University chancellor and UCC’s convenor Stephen Gerlach, there is a need for executives’ salaries to be considered in a national context. Transparency would probably foster a ‘dampening effect’ to avoid salary levels getting out of line.
The council has spent more than two years championing transparency and moderation in executive salary decisions.
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