Frank Gould

"Frank Gould, began to cut jobs and slash budgets" was a common refrain a few years back, as was "Frank Gould, who left the University of East London with a salary of £189,000 - 60% more than he earned the previous year" as the BBC put it.

In addition to Newham University Hospital NHS Trust he is Chairman of the North East London Workforce Development Board and was a member of the First Academic Advisory Board of the NHSU. He is also a Deputy Chairman of a children's charity The Place2Be. While Castells generation were occupying universities for the hell of it, students and staff now do the same to save the place. But the revolting mob pick on and blame Frank, such as here from Student + Staff Occupation, University of East London, May 1998

"While bosses of the privatised utility companies have been discouraged from paying themselves at the expense of customers, Frank Gould (Vice Chancellor) and other UEL 'fat cats' continue to benefit at the expense of students, staff and the broader community.

The Deputy editor of the THES Martin Ince argued:

"With resources across higher education under extreme pressure, it is difficult not to sympathize with poorly-funded teaching staff and cash-strapped students weighed down by loans, who will naturally be asking how these huge leaps in vice-chancellors' pay can be justified. Students are coming out of university with five figure debts, while the people that run the institutions are presumably accumulating rather good salaries."

Sir John Daniel of the Open University — took home £309,000, a rise of 102%. Third placed Sir John Kingman vice-chancellor of the University of Bristol got a rise of 98% to £252,000 and has since gone, Frank was way down in Fifth-place with a salary of £189,000 — a meagre 60% rise. The trick is to do it in your last year — pensions are based on your final year's earnings. The easiest trick is to sustain the argument that lecturers and other university staff cannot have a decent pay increase this year. This is done by using the words 'you're fired' to anyone who counters that argument. Some clever-dick may point out that the total pay increases for vice-chancellors this year is the equivalent of nearly 1,000 new lecturers; but they are really making your point for you — i.e. who then in this meritocracy is thus rendered more valuable. A variant on this is Baroness Warwick (chief executive of Universities UK, the umbrella group of University Vice-Chancellors and Principals) almost Marie Antoinette-like ability to see nothing wrong whatsoever. She said;

"Vice-chancellors' pay is a matter for individual universities. But, clearly, universities will wish the salaries of their vice-chancellors to reflect the fact that they are successfully running multi-million pound businesses."

A nice twist of the bureaucrat's 'I cannot comment on specific cases.' Some other students have noticed something else about Frank and perhaps ERA:

"We particularly condemn Vice-Chancellor Frank Gould who is irresponsibly putting these cuts through just before his retirement and so will not have to deal with their effects, yet will be able to make huge capital out of the Stratford development programme when he begins his new career in consultancy."

And what might they be building at the Brand–new facilities at UEL's Docklands and Stratford Campuses — a Business School and Entrepreneurship Centre. It's the 'Knowledge Economy" stupid... Flicking through the brouchures for all this development one sees the need for all the euphemisms as they jump on a literally Olympic bandwagon.:

"UEL is playing a leading role in the redevelopment and renewal of Thames Gateway as a pioneer of knowledge-based urban regeneration. It is the host for a new pan Thames Gateway creative and cultural industry lifelong learning network and also for KnowledgeEast, the Centre for Knowledge Exchange which is a key part of the Thames Gateway's innovation and enterprise infrastructure. [...] Knowledge Dock is one the most important knowledge exchange centres in the Gateway, [...] regeneration and sustainable community development [...] Knowledge Platform, a wide area database of about 1,000 different indicators for tracking trends and change in the Gateway. The Knowledge Platform [...] Other areas of sustainable community expertise include [...] simulation and modeling, evolutionary computing, community engagement, programme evaluation, social enterprise and volunteering, environmental technologies, renewable energy, sustainable construction and so on."

The Independent, reported back in 2000:

"University of East London (UEL) were bitter that they were painted as the worst in the country by the Higher Education Funding Council (Hefce). They were found to have the worst projected drop-out rates based on the records of undergraduates in recent years - 36 per cent compared with just 1 per cent at Cambridge."