Frank Gould

Frank Gould is the former vice-chancellor of the University of East London (UEL). In 1992 The Guardian reported that during his tenure at UEL, Gould "began to cut jobs and slash budgets". The BBC cited Gould as an example of "university bosses who received pay rises well above those of their academic and support staff in 2000/01". It reported that Gould "left the University of East London with a salary of £189,000 - 60% more than he earned the previous year".

In 2005 Gould was appointed a non-executive director of Newham University Hospital NHS Trust. He is also chairman of the North East London Workforce Development Board and was a member of the First Academic Advisory Board of the National Health Service University (NHSU). He is a Deputy Chairman of a children's charity The Place2Be.

In 1998 Gould was criticised by a Student and Staff Occupation at the University of East London as follows:

"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 Times Higher Education Supplement (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, Gould was in fifth-place with a salary of £189,000 — a 60% rise. Baroness Warwick (chief executive of Universities UK, the umbrella group of University Vice-Chancellors and Principals) argued;

"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."

Some other students condemned Gould:

"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."

The Brand–new facilities at UEL's Docklands and Stratford Campuses included a Business School and Entrepreneurship Centre. Flicking through the brochures reveals this:

"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."

Affiliations

• ERA Advisory board