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“ *Leaders at Australian universities have lost their moral compass* :

Flinders University vice-chancellor Colin Stirling earned just shy of $1.5 million in 2024 (up from $1.3 million a year earlier), and has also pocketed over $700,000 since joining the board of IDP Education in 2018. Stirling, who runs a university ranked 374th in the world, earns about $200,000 more than Oxford vice-chancellor Irene Tracey, who doesn’t have a second job. Oxford is among the finest institutions in the world.

Then, in South Australia, there’s David Lloyd, who reaped an epic $3.1 million after his institution, the University of South Australia, merged with the University of Adelaide in 2025. It included a “merger-related termination payment” of $1.1 million. As one very senior member of the university sector told me: “It’s obscene”.

All of this, and more, is ticked off by feckless chancellors who seem incapable of reading the room. There have been four government inquiries into failings of university governance, and the only people who seem to think there is no problem are the chancellors themselves. Meanwhile, they sign off on self-serving deals for vice-chancellors that seem blind to plain old common sense and reputation-damaging public optics.

All this is even more appalling when viewed in the light of $160 million in underpayments to casual and contract staff across the sector since 2014, with some estimates placing that figure closer to $300 million. Meanwhile, universities keep slashing jobs despite their robust financial health: ANU shed around 1,000 jobs in 2025; Wollongong cut almost 300 positions while Dewar was running the shop; and at Flinders, Stirling has embarked on at least three job-cutting exercises since he became boss in 2015 — while his salary rises like an overexcited sponge cake.

Amid all of this, non-disclosure agreements have become the norm, meaning we will never know the true extent of the decision-making that is running the university sector into the ground.”