Ross Clark Ross Clark

Footballers deserve their pay – can the same be said of university vice chancellors?

Louise Richardson, Vice Chancellor of the University of Oxford, is, according to the university’s website, a political scientist whose research ‘specialises in international security with a particular emphasis on terrorist movements’. Next time she tries to defend her £350,000 salary I suggest she corners someone from the economics department for advice. I don’t think, at her current state of understanding, she would get very far in a PhD on relative pay in the fields of business, entertainment and academia.

I am sure Ms Richardson works very hard and her work is all terribly worthy but, alas, in a capitalist system that is not, and has never been, how financial rewards are dispensed. So for her to defend her salary against attacks by ‘mendacious media and tawdry politicians’ by saying that footballers and bankers are paid far more is fatuous.

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