Are Vice Chancellors the New Football Managers?

Although as a rule I tend to steer clear of footballing metaphors, the wall-to-wall coverage of the World Cup on our TV screens over the last few weeks has got me thinking about how certain aspects of higher education management are starting to resemble 'the beautiful game'. Recently there has been a collective gnashing of teeth about the exorbitant salary levels of university leaders. This has made me wonder whether vice chancellors might be the new professional football managers: highly paid and on insecure short-term contracts with no guarantee of renewal. While I'm not suggesting for a moment that vice chancellors are operating in the brutal hire'em, fire'em world of the football manager, there is a degree to which higher education appears to be moving in that direction. Just like professional football, university management has become a more results-oriented business. Vice chancellors are under increasing pressure to perform and have to work hard to keep the...