Ranked: The UK uni Vice-Chancellors getting paid the most extortionate salaries in 2024

If you’ve ever wondered what on earth your uni spends your £30,000 of tuition fees on, prepare to despair! The uni Vice-Chancellor is probably blowing your life savings on champagne and chardonnay. i News has worked out the eye-watering amounts of money that UK uni Vice-Chancellors get paid and claim back in expenses. You could legit buy a four bedroom house with most of these salaries (or, a shoebox-sized studio in central London).

The Vice-Chancellors’ salaries are only the start of what they make. Most Vice-Chancellors of UK unis get to live in a special house for free. Some unis even pay their household bills – the Vice-Chancellor of Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh somehow got the Uni to cover his £12,000 gardening bill.

Many Vice-Chancellors also claim harrowing amounts of money back for work expenses. These range from to things as extortionate as luxury hotels and business class flights, to things as petty as M&S bottled water. The Vice-Chancellor of Cardiff Metropolitan University somehow managed to claim back a £130 luxury kitchen utensil set. No clue how a fancy herb chopper helps run the university.

The Vice-Chancellor of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) claimed back £83,000 in expenses, despite earning the second highest salary. Yikes.

Here are the 10 UK uni Vice-Chancellors who got paid the most in the 2022-2023 academic year.

The University of Oxford is so disturbingly high because the Vice-Chancellor swapped over in that year. So the £1,048,000 is the combined earnings of two people. Bishop Grosseteste University only paid the Vice-Chancellor Peter Neil £423,905 that year because it included a loss of office payment. The Uni is currently advertising for a new Vice-Chancellor with a salary of £150,000 to £160,000.

10. King’s College London – £414,000

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9. University of Essex – £414,868

8. University of Edinburgh – £418,000

The Vice-Chancellor of Edinburgh Uni gets to live for free in a mansion on Regent Terrace, one of the spenniest streets in Scotland
(Credit: SylviaStanley via Creative Commons)

7. Bishop Grosseteste University – £423,905

6. University of Wolverhampton – £443,000

5. Imperial College London – £476,000

4. University of Cambridge – £499,000

3. University College London (UCL) – £509,849

2. London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) – £533,000

1. University of Oxford – £1,048,000

An earlier version of this article said that the Vice-Chancellor of the University of St Andrews, Sally Mapstone, earns £533,000 a year, when she actually only has a salary of £331,000 a year, with an additional £40,000 payment in lieu of pension contributions. The salary at Abertay University is also £251,000, not £486,000. We are sorry about this.

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Feature image credit: Photo of Anthony Forster by Essex Comms via Creative Commons. Image of Peter Mathieson by Mike Rohsopht via Creative Commons.