Alarm over ‘staggering’ leadership pay at UK private providers

A for-profit higher education provider with just two academics paid its director more than the outgoing vice-chancellor of the University of Manchester earns, figures show.

The London School of Academics, which is based in the east London suburb of Rainham, paid just over £300,000 to its director, Sheila Singh, in the financial year up to March 2023, latest accounts show.

Her remuneration included a salary of £8,628, pension contributions of £122,180 and dividends worth £164,979, according to Companies House filings, which state that only two academics worked at the college that year, in addition to three non-academic staff and Ms Singh.

By contrast, Dame Nancy Rothwell at Manchester – which has more than 7,000 academics and 12,000 staff in total – received £260,399 in 2022-23 – albeit this was below the £325,000 average for UK university leaders that year.

The London School of Academics, which was founded in 2010, received £825,000 in tuition fee loans in 2022-23, according to data from the Student Loans Company (SLC). Students at the school, which offers Level 5 business diplomas, also received a further £2.3 million in maintenance loans and grants.

Other private provider heads also enjoyed significant pay packages that year. Syed Zaidi, whose family-run London School of Science and Technology operates across six campuses in London, Luton and Birmingham, received a total of £935,000, including dividends of £585,000. About 7,000 students study business and management at the school, which had a £58.8 million turnover and enjoyed a £21.4 million profit that year.

However, many for-profit providers registered with the Office for Students (OfS) did not publish full accounts for that year, which made scrutiny of executive pay impossible.

The latest published accounts for the Canary Wharf-based Applied Business Academy, which received £7.2 million in SLC funding in 2022-23, relate to the year ended December 2021. Its students also received almost £20 million in SLC support that year.

Brit College, also based near Canary Wharf, received £3.2 million in SLC loans in the same year. It published its accounts last week, after saying they had been “corrupted” when Times Higher Education flagged relevant web pages contained two pages of nonsensical “Wingdings” symbols.

Numerous other OfS-registered providers scrutinised by Times Higher Education failed to publish executive pay details on their websites. In many cases, only highly abridged accounts with no information on executive pay were lodged at Companies House.

None of the private colleges mentioned responded to requests for comment.

In a statement, the OfS said “all universities and colleges registered with the OfS are required to submit financial statements to the OfS and produce and publish these in line with our accounts direction, once they have been registered for a full financial year. Within those accounts, universities and colleges need to include a justification for their head of institution’s pay.

“Where we have concerns that an institution is not meeting the requirements set out in our accounts direction, or other concerns about senior staff pay, we may take regulatory action.”

The lack of financial transparency data could fuel concerns raised about the oversight of private providers, with a study by the Public Accounts Committee published in April calling on the Department for Education to require providers teaching university degrees under franchise agreements to state more clearly how students’ tuition fees are spent.

Gill Evans, emeritus professor of medieval theology and intellectual history at the University of Cambridge, described executive salaries at private providers as “staggering”.

“Public universities are subject to governance requirements…but alternative providers may run themselves largely as they please,” she said.

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com