A rundown of the most ridiculous and unnecessary things uni Vice-Chancellors spent your money on

Cheese knives? Cocktails? Garden maintenance?

2 months ago

Claudia Cox | News

As UK unis crumble, lecturers are laid off and students are too crippled by debt to afford oat milk, Vice-Chancellors have spent well over a million pounds of uni students’ money on luxury hotels and gardens. This is pretty harrowing when you consider that most Vice-Chancellors of UK unis already earn over £300,000 a year and get to live in fancy houses for free.

i News sent a load of Freedom of Information requests to different UK unis, asking how much the Vice-Chancellors claimed back on expenses in the last academic year. Some of the items do make sense if you’ve got to travel somewhere for work. But many of the things are so unessential you’ll be crying to Student Finance for a refund.

Quite a few Russell Group unis didn’t respond to i News’s emails, so some Vice-Chancellors out there could be spending unis’ money on even sillier things.

This is not a good look when you think about how many UK unis are in financial trouble and are laying off staff. The government is rumoured to increase tuition fees from £9,250 to £10,500 next year. The money had better not be spent on herb choppers.

So, here are the silliest things that UK uni Vice-Chancellors claimed back money for.

A herb chopper and a cheese knife

Yes, really. The last Vice-Chancellor of Cardiff Metropolitan University asked the Uni to fund a luxury £130 set of kitchen utensils, including a a £33 cheese knife and a £39 herb chopper, as a leaving present for another member of staff. I still don’t get why anyone needs a special gadget to chop herbs, or why students have to pay for it?

A £1.05 Marks and Spencer’s soft drink

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Graham Galbraith, Vice-Chancellor of Portsmouth Uni and M&S enthusiast
(Credit: Critical Hippo, via Creative Commons)

This is a whole new level of pettiness. So, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Portsmouth, Graham Galbraith, gets paid £376,000 a year. He claimed back money for a £1.05 soft drink from Marks & Spencer. Well, hydrate or diedrate!

Upkeep of the ‘chauffeur’s cottage’

So, many unis provide senior members of staff with accommodation, which is miles better than the glorified hamster cages which students pay like £200 a week for. Some unis go the extra mile by paying for the staff’s living expenses in those houses as well.

Heriot-Watt University paid the Vice-Chancellor’s £105,800 household bills last year. £640 went on the upkeep of the “chauffeur’s cottage” and £12,000 was spent on gardening. The flowerbeds must be immaculate.

A dozen bottles of wine?!

The last Vice-Chancellor of the University for the Creative Arts, Bashir Makhoul, seems to have a taste for fine dining. He billed the uni for a meal costing nearly £200 at Dean Street Townhouse, an extremely fancy restaurant in London where Gwyneth Paltrow and Keira Knightley have been spotted.

uk uni vice-chancellors most money students dean street townhouse

Dean Street Townhouse doesn’t list the prices online, which isn’t a good sign
(Credit: Oxyman via Creative Commons)

He also managed to spend £1,200 on a dinner for the Uni’s governors. Their meal included a dozen bottles of wine and several cocktails. They’d better have enjoyed themselves.

A ride in a Mercedes

In January, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Reading, Robert Van de Noort, splashed out £220 on an “executive chauffeur and Mercedes E-class or similar” car ride. This wasn’t a one-off because of an emergency, because he also claimed back a £156 and a £104 taxi ride.

A five-star trip to India

Anthony Forster, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Essex, is quite the jet setter. Bear in mind that he already earns £414,868 a year. His return business class flight to India cost £2,200. He stayed in five-star hotels while he was there, which must have cost a fair bit.