They earn a lot more than the president of South Africa. They depend almost entirely on public money for their income. And they head relatively small institutions.
Meet the new mega-earners of academe. Leading the pack is Professor Aaron Ndlovu, vice-chancellor of Mangosuthu Technikon, who last year somehow made ends meet with a shade under R3-million. President Thabo Mbeki earns R964 000.
Aubrey Mokadi, vice-chancellor of Vaal University of Technology (the former Vaal Triangle Technikon), eased his way through 2003 with a cool R1,5-million. And Professor Neo Mathabe, last year vice-chancellor of Technikon SA (TSA; now merged with Unisa), had to make do with R1,1-million.
All these bonanzas — as well as those in which many other vice-chancellors (VCs) and deputy vice-chancellors (DVCs) rejoiced last year — are comfortably higher than the minister of education’s annual earnings (R746 000); and make the (obviously lower) salaries of the education department’s director general and deputy directors general look derisory.
Ten days ago Randall van den Heever, an African National Congress MP, posed a question to Minister of Education Naledi Pandor for oral reply, asking about the remuneration of vice-chancellors and senior management of all higher education institutions; whether this remuneration is ”appropriate in the current state of development” of tertiary institutions; and whether Pandor would consider regulating this remuneration ”to address the lack of uniformity”.
The minister is still to answer the question in Parliament, but the Mail & Guardian asked the Department of Education for salary details, which it supplied this week. The department separates 2003 remuneration data (no figures are available for this year) into three categories: ”upper”, ”middle” and ”low” (see table).
The councils of tertiary institutions are their highest decision-making bodies, charged with overall fiduciary oversight of the institution, and made up by law of at least 60% of non-academic members. They determine the remuneration of senior management. The government has no legal means as yet to regulate, or intervene in, this area.
Educationists who spoke to the M&G this week said it is outrageous that the smaller and poorer institutions pay their VCs and DVCs such disproportionately high salaries. The same academics also made a clear distinction between institutions that derive all or most of their income from the state, and those that generate much income themselves (via donor funding, for example).
So, although the University of KwaZulu-Natal (formerly the universities of Durban-Westville and Natal), Potchefstroom University (now merged and called North-West University), Unisa, Stellenbosch, Free State University and Rand Afrikaans University all have their VCs and DVCs firmly lodged in the ”upper” category, they derive far less of their total income from the state — only about 50% in some cases.
By contrast, institutions such as Mangosuthu, Vaal and TSA last year derived most of their income from the state. They contrast with institutions that pay their VCs upper-level salaries in two other key ways: staff and student numbers, and overall annual budget.
Mangosuthu last year had 468 staff members, and 6 248 students. Vaal had 1 134 staff and 11 470 students. TSA had 2 066 staff and 25 647 students.
Unisa had 3 167 staff and 73 038 students. Stellenbosch had 2 491 staff and 16 414 students. And Free State University had 1 373 staff and 15 066 students.
Mangosuthu’s expenditure last year was R146-million; Vaal’s was R311-million; and TSA’s was R436-million, education department records show.
In a different financial stratosphere, Unisa’s expenditure was R1,2-billion; Stellenbosch’s was R1,4-billion; and the Free State’s was R1,3-billion.
Supreme Court of Appeal Judge Edwin Cameron, the chair of Wits University’s council, expressed surprise at some of the VC salaries the M&G conveyed to him. Wits VC Loyiso Nongxa modestly sits in the ”low” category. Stressing that Wits makes the salaries of its senior management public, Judge Cameron commented on the salaries in the upper category by saying: ”It’s worth considering that judges earn R600 000 a year.”
And Geoff Budlender of the Legal Resources Centre, who chairs the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) council, said: ”At UCT the council sets the remuneration by benchmarking with similar South African institutions, and with other positions of leadership in the public sector. It is beyond our means to match the private sector or the international market, and we do not attempt to do so.”
UCT’s VC, Njabulo Ndebele, is in the ”middle” category; and its expenditure last year was R1,5-billion.
Tertiary leadership problems are endemic in South Africa, says the Council on Higher Education (CHE) in a review of higher education since 1994 that it will release later this month. The CHE is the government’s education think tank, and its statutory role is to advise the education minister. The M&G understands that there is increasing political pressure to regulate senior management remuneration, without interfering with institutional autonomy.
Professor Nic Wiehahn, chairperson of the Vaal University of Technology council, said: ”Let me put it this way. This whole thing has gone through all the committees of council. It’s gone through the remuneration committee, it’s gone through the finance committee and they applied three criteria: performance, market and affordability. We also had the auditors of the university look at it — PriceWaterhouseCoopers — and everybody agreed that the procedures were followed and everything was in order.”
Mokadi was ”unavailable” on Thursday to speak to the M&G, as was Mathabe.
Joseph Moloto, the human resources manager at Unisa said that the university bases the salary of its VC on the salary survey by auditing company Deloitte, which provides a cross-section of directors’ salaries in the private sector, parastatals and tertiary education institutions. ”We take an average of the salaries of the participants in the survey and then decide what we can afford in terms of that”.
Ndlovu sent a message to the M&G through his personal assistant that: ”It is discourteous just to phone and ask about [my] salary package. There is a protocol and that needs to be followed.”
Additional reporting by Vicki Robinson