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Multiple West Australian university executives took home pay packets of more than half-a-million dollars in 2025, with the sector’s spending on key management staff across the state’s institutions exceeding $36 million.
An analysis of financial statements, published by the universities, revealed that 16 people were paid over $500,000 in 2025 across four of the five institutions.
The state’s sandstone university – the University of Western Australia – has not yet released a detailed breakdown of numbers, but paid just over $4.6 million in total to nine key managers.
Of the universities with a more detailed breakdown available, the University of Notre Dame had the highest number of key executives on $500,000-plus pay packets, while Curtin University had the state’s largest overall bill for executives at just over $9.6 million.
Key management personnel include the vice chancellor, deputy vice chancellors, provosts and vice presidents. Some universities also include deans of schools and other C-suite executives in their disclosures.
National Tertiary Education Union WA division secretary Scott Fitzgerald said executive pay had increased by $2.5 million on 2024, and by $3.6 million on 2023, and that there was “simply no belt-tightening at the top”.
“The telling detail is that fewer executives are sharing more money. Average executive pay jumped almost a fifth, or about 19 per cent, in a single year,” he said.
“You can’t preach restraint to the academic and professional staff who keep these universities running while quietly growing the pay of those at the very top.”
Fitzgerald said in comparison, the vice-chancellor at UWA and Curtin were both paid around double what the state’s director general of education earned.
Both are on annual salaries of more than $1 million.
“The director general oversees more than 800 schools, over 300,000 students and more than 44,000 staff, and that’s for $528,000, set openly by an independent tribunal. University executive pay answers to no such test,” he said.
“Every WA university pays several executives more than the premier. At Curtin, it’s more than a dozen. That’s been true every year for over a decade.
“So, more than Barnett, more than McGowan, more than Cook – it’s become normal, and it shouldn’t be.”
Fitzgerald said he believed executive pay should be linked to public sector salaries, particularly the public universities – all in WA except Notre Dame.
That idea was also outlined in the Final Report and Principles: Expert Council on University Governance, published in October 2025, compiled by an expert council and presented to education ministers nationally.
“While much of the public commentary on remuneration focuses on that of the vice chancellor, concerns regarding the structure and level of remuneration and the connection to performance extend to the executive group or senior management of the university,” the report reads.
“The appropriate level of remuneration for the vice-chancellor and the university executive (referred to together as senior management), is a clear point of focus and contention at present.”
The report notes while it was important to compensate the management of “large and complex organisations”, greater reference to public sector benchmarks, clear justification and strong and demonstrable links to performance outcomes, as well as greater transparency around remuneration frameworks and outcomes were important to “rebuilding trust on this issue”.
In July 2025, the University Chancellors Council also released updated voluntary guidelines for remuneration in response to concerns around transparency.
The Council did not respond to questions.
Fitzgerald said executive pay had “almost no relationship to a university’s size, its ranking or its performance”.
“It’s benchmarked against other uni executives, not against the public these institutions exist to serve,” he said.
“Pay ran away because the people setting it aren’t accountable to staff, students or the public. Link the pay to public-sector norms, and put staff and students back on the bodies that decide it.
“That treats the cause, not just the symptom.
“West Australians fund these universities and rely on them. It’s not too much to ask that the people running them are paid, and held to account, on terms the public can actually see and justify.”
WA’s Tertiary Education Minister Tony Buti did not answer questions about executive pay, but did say that more broadly university governance was something that had “come into sharp focus”, particularly within the federal report, and was something that needed to be addressed.
