Analysis of Higher Education Statistics Agency figures has shown that the University of Exeter is lagging behind its sector peers on salaries for female academics and the use of insecure contracts to employ academic staff.
Last year the university employed more than twice as many men than women in the highest full-time academic pay band and nearly one and a half times more in the second highest band.
Taken together, the university pays 46% of its full-time female academic staff in these higher rate bands compared with 53% across the 140 members of Universities UK.
It is in 57th place for the proportion paid in the highest rate band and 113th place for the second highest rate band despite being among the largest employers in the sector.
Fourteen of the fifteen Universities UK members with the highest proportions of full-time female academic staff in the highest pay band are located in London, including Birkbeck College, Goldsmith’s College and King’s College.
Full-time female academic staff salary distribution at the University of Exeter has only changed incrementally over the past five years, during which time its full-time academic staff payroll has grown by nearly a third.
Most of the change that has taken place has occurred since sector staff began industrial action in response to cuts to the universities pension scheme in 2018.
A parallel dispute began the following year over pay equality and employment conditions, when Exeter university staff took part in a national eight day strike.
Another Exeter strike followed in early 2020 and the dispute continued with the largest walkout in the sector’s history this week and last.
The University of Exeter also compares poorly with its Universities UK peers on its use of insecure academic staff employment contracts.
It employs 55% of its academic staff on insecure contracts compared with 47% across Universities UK’s 140 members.
It is in 109th place for the proportion of its academic staff it employs on permanent or open-ended contracts and among the highest users of fixed-term contracts in the sector.
It has only made changes to its practices in this area over the past two years, since Exeter staff began to take strike action alongside their sector colleagues.
Between 2017 and 2019 the proportion of academic staff it employed on insecure contracts remained unchanged at nearly two thirds.
In 2019-20 this fell by 2% and last year another 7%, but at 55% of the academic workforce this proportion remains among the highest in the sector.
The ten Universities UK members with the lowest proportion of staff employed on insecure contracts, among which several also have large academic payrolls, employ fewer than 11% of their academic staff this way.
The Exeter branch of the University & College Union (UCU), which represents higher education workers across the country, says that between August and December last year the University of Exeter issued around 600 casual employment contracts against just 200 that were permanent or open-ended.
It also says that academics who have worked at the university for more than four years on fixed-term contracts may now be granted contracts which are presented as open-ended but which may still depend on time-limited external funding, meaning they remain temporary and therefore insecure.
