Dear fellow QUT students,
Queensland University of Technology is selling you the dream and pocketing the profits, and no one seems to be talking about it.
While you’re cramming assignments between shifts, juggling rising rent, and watching entire degrees vanish mid-semester, QUT’s executive team is thriving. Quietly. Elegantly. And very, very lucratively.
Hidden behind the legal jargon and polished corporate language, we dug through the 2024 QUT Annual Report, a public document open to everyone, and uncovered how the university spends its money and sets its priorities. We’re not breaking news here; we’re simply examining what QUT has disclosed about itself and asking if anyone else finds it a little absurd.
Let’s start with the obvious headline. Vice-Chancellor Margaret Sheil took home a total remuneration of $1.169 million in 2024, including superannuation. That’s 13.11% up from $1.025 million the year prior. No bonus this time, but it’s clear she didn’t need it; her base salary alone increased to $1.138 million. That makes her one of the highest-paid university leaders in the country, out-earning every state premier and even the Prime Minister by nearly 50%. While Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s salary sits at approximately $586,000, Sheil’s pay packet towers almost double that figure.
While the university talked up “economic pressures” and the urgent need to tighten belts, the executive salary pool steadily swelled, as if leadership was somehow immune to the financial strain facing the rest of the university. Which, when paired with cuts to frontline staff, support services, and actual academic offerings, paints a very clear picture: the top end is clearly priority.
With all this in mind, the obvious question becomes: if QUT is crying poor, where exactly is the money flowing?
Well, QUT spent $12.9 million on consultants in 2023. However, according to the National Tertiary Education Union’s Ending Bad Governance for Good report, the actual figure was far higher: $40.47 million. That’s 213% more than what was stated in the Annual Report. Millions that could have gone into teaching, support, infrastructure, and even the Creative Arts degrees, instead went to external advice, all while professional staff scrambled to do more with less.
The Vice-Chancellor isn’t alone in benefitting. The combined salaries of QUT’s top 11 executive officers rose from $4.962 million in 2021 to $6.755 million in 2023, a staggering $1.793 million increase, or 36.14%, in just two years. All of this while students saw services shrink, degrees disappear, and support dwindle. If executive pay can balloon without affecting service provision, why can’t similar investment be made into the student community? And perhaps most tellingly this salary surge coincided with QUT sliding backwards in the Times Higher Education Rankings.
When questioned about this, the university’s justification was, essentially, that it wasn’t getting worse, just that everyone else was getting better.
Most recently, QUT announced it would cut several Creative Industries degrees and majors, including dance, entertainment studies, and visual art, core programs that once defined the university’s cultural identity. In its official media release, QUT insisted this wasn’t a reduction but a “renewal” of its creative commitment. Spin it however you like — to students losing their pathways and staff are losing their jobs. It is abandonment dressed up as innovation.
At the same time, QUT proudly rolled out its $7.9 million Yandiwanba Space Technology Precinct, celebrated its growing partnerships with defence contractors, and recently announced a School of Medicine. The university’s spending makes one thing clear: not all degrees are valued equally.
None of this is hypothetical. It’s all written in the report, in between glowing paragraphs about strategy, transformation, and “opportunity pipelines.”
Meanwhile, back in student life, domestic retention fell below target. International student retention dropped to just 53.6%. Indigenous participation also dipped, now sitting at 2.2%, below the university’s own targets. These statistics were buried among full-page spreads celebrating executive strategy sessions, industry awards, and digital platform launches.
The university says it cares deeply about “student wellbeing” and “community connection.” However, at ground level, we’re seeing services merged, support hubs replaced by fewer staff doing more work for students who are falling through the cracks.
Let’s talk transparency. QUT publishes executive salaries in broad pay bands, so you’ll never quite know exactly how much anyone is earning. It’s technically compliant. Legally neat. And completely opaque. Just enough ambiguity to make accountability a little bit harder.
What does all of this mean? It means that while students are being asked to show resilience, adapt to AI, and graduate into a job market shaped by automation, those leading the institution are quietly cashing in, hiring consultants, restructuring faculties, and calling it progress.
We are not shocked. We are outraged, and we’re pointing to the university’s own reporting to ask: Is this what the “real world” is meant to look like? If it is, it’s certainly not the deal we were sold.
This is a student’s response to a public document and a reminder that scrutiny is part of citizenship. QUT works because we do. We deserve better than being treated like a business model with legs.
We are not here to tear down. We’re here to hold up the mirror, and it’s time QUT took a good, long look.
