Michael Chugani

Public Eye | Vice-chancellor Peter Mathieson does not deserve Hong Kong

University of Hong Kong supremo is latest expatriate to quit a well-paying job, raising questions why we cannot hire our own talent

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Peter Mathieson announced that he would leave the University of Hong Kong in January 2018. Photo: Dickson Lee

Michael Chugani

Published: 4:00pm, 7 Feb 2017Updated: 12:08am, 8 Feb 2017

Peter Mathieson doesn’t deserve Hong Kong. That’s what I say. Everyone is aghast that he’s prematurely quitting as University of Hong Kong vice-chancellor for a similar job at the University of Edinburgh. But so what? Our academic freedom thrived long before we ever heard of him and it’ll survive long after he’s gone.

His exact words in quitting were: “There are very few universities in the world that could have tempted me to leave HKU but Edinburgh is one of them.” Translation: HKU sucks compared to Edinburgh. That makes him an opportunist.

HKU hired him in 2014 from Bristol University at an inflated salary, which he jumped at. We need to wonder if he would have landed the Edinburgh job if he was still medicine and dentistry dean at Bristol. The prestige of HKU acted as a stepping stone.

Mathieson said he would be taking a big pay cut but money is not the most important thing. Very noble. But the point is not that Edinburgh will pay him less. It’s why HKU paid him so much. He gets nearly HK$6 million a year, double what he’ll get at Edinburgh. If such extravagance sounds familiar, think of Jay Walder.

The MTR hired him in 2012 to run our railway at a bloated yearly salary of over HK$7 million, plus several million more in bonuses. It was far more than the HK$3 million he got as head of New York City’s subway system.