“Equal respect does not require identical compensation. Pay equity must compare complete jobs, total remuneration and independently negotiated value, not rely on historical labels of ‘analogous’ grades. “Consider the principle of equal respect for all employees is fundamental in all labour dealings. At the same time, however, achieving pay equity requires a holistic assessment of the complete role, the overall remuneration package, and the value established through independent negotiation, rather than comparisons based primarily on historical grade equivalencies”.

Pay equity must begin with an accurate comparison

The recent article (https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/features/Pay-Equity-in-Public-Universities-The-case-against-the-approved-market-premium-2046052), “Pay Equity in Public Universities: The case against the approved market premium,” attributed to Patrice Dzontoh, Confidence Kakraba, Cynthia Ameyaa Oduro and Michael Osei Owusu, members of the Ghana Association of University Administrators (GAUA), raises an important question about fairness in Ghana’s public universities. The authors note that universities are collaborative institutions and that lecturers cannot teach, supervise and conduct research effectively without competent administrators, accountants, librarians, engineers, ICT professionals, lawyers, procurement officers, planners and other professional staff. All categories of staff across universities are indispensable in helping their institutions achieve the three core mandates of teaching, research and community service or outreach.

This acknowledgement, however, does not sustain the article’s central claim. Institutional interdependence does not mean occupational sameness. Equal dignity is not identical work; collaboration is not interchangeability; and membership of the broad category called “Senior Members” does not automatically establish equal qualifications, equal career burdens, equal promotion standards, equal labour-market pressures or an entitlement to an identical salary structure.

The argument against the approved market premium rests heavily on historical analogies between selected academic and administrative grades. That reliance on analogy has, over the years, operated as an injustice to members of the University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG). It has repeatedly allowed gains secured through UTAG’s own bargaining mandate, evidence, mobilisation and negotiation to be treated as a benchmark to which another occupational group should automatically be raised, even when the qualifications, job functions, promotion regimes, career risks and compensation arrangements are materially different. That is not pay equity. It is the flattening of distinct careers into a false equivalence.

The problem with the word ‘analogous’

A position described as analogous to another is not thereby identical to it. Analogy may be useful for protocol, institutional ranking, committee representation or broad placement within an organisational hierarchy. It cannot, without a fresh and rigorous job evaluation, carry the much heavier conclusion that the two positions must receive the same market premium or remain permanently tied to one compensation trajectory.

The article cites the Registrar as being analogous to the professorial grade and presents the comparison between a Registrar and an Assistant Lecturer as proof of inequity.

This comparison is rhetorically striking but analytically weak. It compares an office at the apex of an administrative hierarchy with an academic career grade, then isolates one component of remuneration the market premium from the full compensation, tenure, responsibility, progression and allowance arrangements applicable to each category.

A title-to-title or grade-to-grade analogy cannot substitute for comparing the actual work and the complete reward package. At best, the comparison is akin to comparing the market premium of a medical officer in a hospital with that of the hospital administrator. Such a comparison can only produce a misleading conclusion about fairness.

If analogy is treated as permanent salary identity, it becomes a one-way ratchet. Whenever UTAG negotiates an improvement based on the peculiar demands and erosion of academic remuneration, the old analogy is invoked to demand automatic replication.

Yet the same logic is rarely applied to substantive administrative-office allowances, responsibility benefits, institutional privileges and the longer duration for which many administrative office holders receive them. Equity cannot mean following UTAG’s gains while leaving category-specific advantages outside the comparison.

Qualifications and career entry are materially different

The two occupational streams are built for different purposes and therefore apply different qualification pathways.

The academic track is organised around advanced disciplinary expertise and the production, validation and transmission of knowledge.

Appointment to the regular academic career increasingly requires doctoral-level preparation or progression towards it, specialised research competence, the capacity to teach at tertiary level, publish credible scholarship, supervise research and contribute to a field nationally and internationally.

The years invested in postgraduate training, often accompanied by delayed earnings and considerable personal cost, are part of the labour-market context within which academic compensation is negotiated.

Administrative and professional positions have their own legitimate qualifications, professional certifications and expertise. Some GAUA members also hold doctorates and distinguished professional credentials.

That deserves recognition. But the existence of highly qualified individuals in both groups does not make the qualification architecture of the two careers the same.

A doctorate held by an administrator is not necessarily a mandatory condition for the administrative grade occupied, just as a professional credential required for a specialised administrative office is not automatically a condition for appointment as a lecturer. Compensation must assess the requirements of the job and career stream, not simply collect impressive credentials held by individual employees.

The relevant question, therefore, is not whether members of both groups are educated or valuable. They plainly are. The question is whether the minimum entry requirements, continuing scholarly obligations, professional risks and expected outputs are sufficiently identical to justify permanent salary alignment. They are not.

The job functions are complementary, not interchangeable

Universities around the world exist to fulfil three critical mandates: teaching and mentoring the next generation of the workforce; conducting research to generate new knowledge and innovations for societal impact; and community service or outreach that extends knowledge to industry and informs policy and practice for transformative change. Academic Senior Members (ASMs) bear primary responsibility for delivering these academic mandates.

They teach and assess students, develop curricula, supervise undergraduate and postgraduate research, undertake original research, publish, attract grants, mentor emerging scholars, provide academic leadership, engage communities and contribute expert service to the university and the nation. Some ASMs also assume additional administrative responsibilities as Vice-Chancellors, Pro-Vice-Chancellors, Provosts, Deans, Directors and Heads of Academic Departments and Units.

These obligations extend beyond a conventional office day. Research, writing, supervision, fieldwork, peer review and preparation regularly occur outside normal working hours, including at night, on weekends and during periods mistakenly regarded as academic holidays. Academic performance is exposed to student evaluation, peer scrutiny, editorial rejection, external assessment and the unforgiving test of an international knowledge community.

Non-Academic Senior Members (NASMs) administer systems that enable the university to function: admissions, records, finance, procurement, human resources, legal compliance, physical development, information systems and institutional planning.

These functions are essential, but they are not the same functions. An administrator does not become a lecturer because admissions support teaching, just as a lecturer does not become an accountant because a research grant requires financial management. Contribution to a shared institutional mission does not erase occupational boundaries.

The legal principle of equal pay for work of equal value must not be reduced to equal pay for everyone whose work is important. All serious university work is important.

“Equal value” requires evidence-based evaluation of skill, effort, responsibility, working conditions and labour-market considerations. The article assumes the conclusion it ought to prove. It offers institutional indispensability and historical analogy where a rigorous, whole-job and whole-remuneration comparison is required.

UTAG’s promotion regime is distinct and exceptionally demanding

Academic promotion is not simply movement from one organisational grade to the next. It is a cumulative test of scholarship and academic contribution.

Progression normally requires a sustained record of peer-reviewed publications or other recognised scholarly outputs, teaching effectiveness, research and postgraduate supervision, service, evidence of intellectual independence and, at senior levels, national and international standing. Applications are subjected to internal scrutiny and independent external assessment by established scholars. A candidate can serve for years at a rank and still fail to progress if the required scholarly threshold has not been met.

Moreover, promotion does not end the obligation that justified it. A Senior Lecturer, Associate Professor or Professor must continue researching, publishing, supervising, mentoring, seeking grants and contributing to disciplinary knowledge.

The reputational burden grows with rank. Academic work is thus assessed not only within the employing university but also by external peers and publication systems over which the employee and institution have limited control.

GAUA has legitimate promotion and appointment procedures, and this rejoinder does not dismiss them. The point is that those procedures assess a different career. Administrative progression commonly emphasises professional competence, institutional experience, managerial responsibility, performance and suitability for available offices.

Indeed, the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC) does not require GAUA members to publish research articles as a condition for promotion. By contrast, the progression of ASMs rests centrally on demonstrable scholarly production and external peer validation, in addition to teaching and service. Because the criteria and evidentiary burdens differ, it is unsound to lock the two streams into an automatic salary equivalence merely through the language of analogous grades.

Separate bargaining certificates mean separate negotiated outcomes

UTAG, GAUA and other recognised labour organisations possess their own bargaining certificates and represent different constituencies. In this regard, legal and industrial-relations facts matter. Each union develops its demands, establishes the value and peculiar pressures of the work performed by its members, mobilises its constituency, accepts the risks of negotiation and concludes agreements on behalf of those members.

Collective bargaining loses its meaning if an improvement independently negotiated by one union must automatically be transferred to another union that was not a party to that bargain. Such an approach rewards analogy rather than bargaining, weakens incentives for unions to establish their own compensation case and invites perpetual wage leapfrogging.

GAUA is fully entitled to negotiate forcefully for its members. It should do so on the proven value, labour-market position, responsibilities and conditions of administrative and professional work—not by claiming an automatic right to UTAG’s negotiated values.

The fact that earlier arrangements produced a uniform 114 per cent market premium does not transform that historical compromise into an immutable principle. Industrial agreements respond to changing conditions. A past harmonisation made for industrial peace cannot permanently extinguish the right of a certified bargaining union to negotiate a differentiated outcome when the evidence, mandate and circumstances justify it. Harmonisation is a policy choice, not proof that different work has become identical.

The full compensation picture includes the duration of office allowances

The article’s focus on the market premium also understates an important structural difference. Many senior administrative positions are substantive offices or form part of a relatively continuous administrative career pathway. Responsibility and office-holding allowances associated with such posts may therefore be enjoyed for long periods and, in practical terms, can be close to permanent for the occupants of those career offices.

Moreover, some GAUA members receive responsibility allowances for functions closely connected to the positions for which they were employed, whereas UTAG members do not receive equivalent allowances for their core duties. This raises a legitimate question: what additional functions, beyond the core responsibilities of a Faculty Officer, justify a separate responsibility allowance? For UTAG members, the core functions are teaching, research and community service or outreach. Responsibility allowances arise only when an additional, time-bound office such as Head of Department, Vice-Dean, Dean or Pro-Vost is assigned.

For UTAG members, comparable office-holding opportunities—Head of Department, Vice-Dean, Dean, Director, Pro-Vost, Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Vice-Chancellor and similar academic-administrative assignments are generally rotational, competitive and time-bound. Only a limited number of academics hold them at any moment, and the attached allowances end when the term ends. Most academics spend most of their careers without such an allowance while continuing the full load of teaching, research and community outreach.

A credible equity analysis must therefore examine total remuneration over time: basic salary, market premium, professional and responsibility allowances, office-related benefits, access to substantive positions, duration of allowances, workload and career progression. Selecting the market premium of an Assistant Lecturer and comparing it with that of a Registrar, without this complete picture, is not sufficient evidence of injustice.

OTSA and the danger of rewriting a negotiated benefit

The article also questions the consolidation of components associated with the Online Teaching Support Allowance (OTSA), arguing that blended learning depends on administrative and technical staff as well as lecturers. Again, collaboration is being mistaken for identity of obligation. ICT and administrative staff support digital systems as part of their respective professional functions.

The lecturer remains responsible for converting disciplinary content into teachable material, redesigning pedagogy, interacting with students, supervising learning and assessing performance through those systems.

The core work of ICT and related technical staff is to keep the systems operational; how lecturers use those systems to teach, conduct research and supervise students falls within the lecturers’ responsibilities.

For example, ICT staff may be responsible for ensuring internet connectivity, but the use of that connectivity for teaching, research and supervision is not part of their mandate. Indeed, many lecturers across public universities teach, research and supervise students using personally subscribed internet services at home and in their offices.

If GAUA believes that its members have incurred new, demonstrable and uncompensated burdens because of digital education, it can formulate and negotiate an appropriate claim. That would be legitimate. What does not follow is that every benefit negotiated around online teaching must be distributed to everyone who contributes to the wider digital-learning ecosystem.

By that logic, virtually every occupational allowance in a complex institution would have to be shared across all collaborating units.

Collaboration without salary conflation

UTAG does not claim institutional superiority over GAUA. A university cannot achieve excellence through academics alone, and no serious academic leader should wish to weaken the professional administration on which teaching, research and student support depend.

Our position is one of equal respect and genuine collaboration without the unnecessary rivalry and comparisons.

Collaboration is strongest when each professional group’s identity, competence and bargaining autonomy are respected. It is not strengthened by turning one group’s negotiated achievement into evidence against it. Nor is harmony served by repeatedly using “analogous” positions to impose an artificial salary identity on careers whose qualifications, functions, promotion standards, output expectations, office-tenure arrangements and market dynamics are demonstrably different.

GAUA’s legitimate case is for fair compensation based on the value and conditions of its members’ own work. It has no sustainable basis for insisting that its salary structure must move in lockstep with UTAG’s or that a benefit secured through UTAG’s bargaining certificate must be reproduced merely because selected grades were once labelled analogous. On that central claim, the case against the approved market premium has no leg to stand on.

Government and the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission should resist simplistic grade analogies and undertake any review through rigorous, transparent and occupation-specific job evaluation.

Such a review must compare full jobs and total compensation, respect independently certified bargaining units and recognise that fairness sometimes requires differentiated not identical outcomes. Ghana’s public universities need both excellent academics and excellent administrators. They do not need the fiction that the two careers are the same.

Source article addressed

Patrice Dzontoh, Confidence Kakraba, Cynthia Ameyaa Oduro and Michael Osei Owusu, “Pay Equity in Public Universities: The case against the approved market premium,” GhanaWeb, 2 August 2026.

https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/features/Pay-Equity-in-Public-Universities-The-case-against-the-approved-market-premium-2046052