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

Most Read

Love Island finalist Ron Hall has a new girlfriend – and it’s an Islander he was in the villa with!

The heartbreaking reason behind Tulisa’s transformation and why she looks so different now

Nathan breaks silence on MAFS UK split and reveals Lacey left him ‘heartbroken’

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.

Related articles recommended by this author:

• Welp, these are officially the hardest Oxbridge courses to get onto in 2024
• Revealed: The Russell Group unis that are testing on animals the most
• These are the Oxbridge colleges stuffed with the most private school students in 2024

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