was the private sector

Posted by versity on September 18th, 2017

Neither was the private sector a useful guide, he added. “No FTSE 350 business enjoys the certainty that the higher education system benefits from in knowing it has an uncapped flow of new customers coming to it each and every year, bearing £9,000 vouchers from the government.”
Johnson also called on universities to “get a grip” on grade inflation, which was “ripping “ through universities, and which would, unchecked, “undermine the reputation of the entire UK HE sector”. Information about degree awards handed out by universities would be included in the teaching excellence framework (TEF), the newly introduced major assessment of higher education teaching standards, he said.
Marsden said Labour would examine the proposals in detail. “The important thing is that this process has teeth, and that is why I am saying you have to look at the small print. Jo just dashing off a speech at the UUK conference just isn’t going to do the business.”
He added: “This is very much a test for the OfS. Some people have said that the name is a misnomer, so this is an opportunity for the new Office for Students to show that they have got some teeth.”
Responding to Johnson’s speech, the NUS vice-president for higher education, Amatey Doku, said: “Transparency for pay over £150,000 only scratches the surface. We would like to see ratios between highest and lowest-paid staff as well as gender and race pay ratios being published.
“It is absolutely vital that there is a strong student voice at the heart of remuneration committees, and that any money saved through cuts to VC pay is channelled into student bursaries and widening participation, where it is so desperately needed.”
Nick Hillman, director of the Higher Education Policy Institute, said the proposals added extra bureaucracy: “It makes it hard for the OfS to prove it fully recognises the one single most important thing that makes our universities world-class, which is their autonomy.”
On vice-chancellors’ pay, Hillman said, bad publicity would probably have caused a rethink. “Even without Jo Johnson’s speech today, I suspect the remuneration committees which assess university vice-chancellors’ pay would have done their work very differently this year than in the past.”
Ryan Shorthouse, director of the independent thinktank Bright Blue, said the average increase and rates of vice-chancellor remuneration in recent years had been disproportionate and unjustifiable. “Vice-chancellors lead charities and public services; they should show some humility and stop taking advantage of generous contributions from both government and students. The government is right to use the levers it has to enforce restraint,” he said.