Student satisfaction… a key metric in Vice Chancellor salaries?

In late November 2024 the National Tertiary Education Union released a report to the media on university vice chancellor salaries in 2023. The report findings were run in stories by many media outlets – with most pointing out that the salaries of university leaders are typically much higher than those of state premiers and the Prime Minister.

Writing in The Australian, Stephen Matchett, listed the individual salaries of each university’s vice chancellor.

I used that detail to compare the salaries paid to each university leader with the ratings of their undergraduate students with the quality of their entire educational experience in the same year (data drawn from the annual Quality Indicators of Learning and Teaching Student Experience Survey).

Of course student satisfaction is only one factor university councils will consider in setting vice chancellor salaries, and no doubt the new Expert Council on University Governance (established with agreement from all Education Ministers) will have more to say on this in future.

But for now the data shows that there’s a potential imbalance between some VC salaries and the satisfaction of their undergraduate students:

University vice chancellor salaries and undergraduate student satisfaction levels (2023)

*It should be noted that some vice chancellors, eg Prof. Genevieve Bell (ANU), Prof. George Williams (WSU), only commenced in their roles in 2024.