Abstract:
Vice-chancellors' salaries have been criticised in the media and examined by scholars. Therefore, we examine whether vice-chancellors' compensation can be explained by performance, job size/complexity, and/or the incumbent's characteristics/abilities. Our sample consists of all New Zealand universities' vice-chancellors' pay from 2010 to 2023. We find that university characteristics (higher university rankings, having a medical school, and more students), university governance (larger size of the senior leadership team), and vice-chancellor characteristics (being female, older, and being a New Zealander) are associated with higher vice-chancellor compensation. The prior literature has largely ignored the added complexity of a medical school.
