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Reader's comments (9)

#1 Submitted by ... on October 29, 2025 - 8:35am

Kevin's salary has not been publicly disclosed yet. According to a survey by Times Higher Education back in 2018, Trevor McMillan, his predecessor at the time, earned a salary of £253,000 in 2016-17. Including pension contributions, his total remuneration package was £267,000 for that year.

#2 Submitted by m.... on October 29, 2025 - 9:18am

Hardly relevant to the story. About time a VC actually started making hard strategic choices rather than aiming for short term feel good headlines that no one cares about.

#3 Submitted by ... on November 4, 2025 - 9:20am

They don't like being reminded of these things do they? It's only not relevant because the difficult questions are never put, so it's up to us to raise these inconvenient issues in whatever fora we can. Though I am amazed anyone ever reads these comments tbh! And senior management pay restraint and pay reform in the sector would be, in my view at least, a "hard strategic choice" that a courageous VC with integrity would be prepared to make or campaign for. You seem to be a bit of a toady to be honest.

#4 Submitted by ... on November 4, 2025 - 10:24am

That is how heckling works, my friend! You keep reminding them of the bad things they do all the time, especially when they prefer the focus to be on other matters in the find hope that they will take action. The technique was, however, used with great effect last week when HMK was heckled about what when he knew about the Epstein/Andrew affair (a very good question btw!). So it is not at all irrelevant just, if you like unwelcome. He can always come back with the claim that he serves his (undisclosed) pay award because he is the one, in your view, taking the "hard decisions".

#5 Submitted by p.... on November 8, 2025 - 4:15pm

what hard decisions? He is just carrying out the program of his predecessor and blathering on in the vaguest terms about degrees in terms of which no-one would really find much to disagree with.

#6 Submitted by ... on October 30, 2025 - 8:26am

I studied at Keele in the 1980s and it was unique at the time in having a Foundation Year (FY) that required exposure to a wide range of subjects: arts, social sciences and sciences. Even when we started our three year join honors subjects we had to do subsidiary subjects such as Maths or Politics that were different to our main interests to give us a more rounded education. I don't expect that students want 4 year degree courses anymore but the interdisciplinary approach seems to have become more mainstream now.

#7 Submitted by ... on November 4, 2025 - 9:31am

Interesting point, though interdisciplinary is often defined in more restricted ways. I have known several students who studied Joint English and Maths degrees for example and they were all excellent. However they were very few and far between and often that particular Joint subject is no longer available. I think the interdisciplinary we actually push is often pretty bogus concept as studying separate modules in History and one in Maths or Politics is not really interdisciplinary but studying just 2 disciplines. A module involving Maths and English studied together might be interdisciplinary if the methodologies of both disciplines are related to an object of study? The idea of interdisciplinary, as I understand it, is that metholodolgies from both disciplines are deployed in a field of enquiry. I also think that the agenda was used in a more instrumentalist way tbh and what one got was mediocrity in two disciplines rather than any enhancement. But I am a bit of a cynic when it comes to these things, sadly

#8 Submitted by ... on November 4, 2025 - 10:26am

Rather a modish sort of education from a bygone era.

#9 Submitted by griff.... on November 5, 2025 - 4:10pm

This is fine as far as it goes but it does read like a brain dump stream of consciousness. Let's hope that any strategic work has input from business school scholars rather than left to the test tube botherers and snake oil consultants.

Students protest over fee debts and accommodation at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, in February 2025

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Keele explores ‘later specialisation’ after new courses pay off

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