Jan Thomas: The ghost of a vice chancellor?

She runs a university that had a $40 million budget deficit last year, and is on its way to have a $30 million deficit this year. She’s cut over 280 staff. She wants to sell 50% of property that Massey owns.  

And yet to many, she seems to be an untouchable woman at the top of the university chain. Students don’t feel like they know her, staff don’t feel like she listens to them. I sat down with the rarely sighted vice chancellor Jan Thomas in Wellington’s Tussock Café.  

My first impression of Thomas was unexpected. After being told she would be in a rush to get back to Palmerston North, she arrived 15 minutes early for the interview and told me to take my time.  

However, there was a floating expectation in the air.  

Her communications team emailed me prior to the interview: “We’re really keen to foster a relationship between you/Massive and Jan and the other SLT members etc as best we can. I just ask you keep this in mind with your interview and write up.” 

“If things aren’t fair and balanced, it will be difficult to get your requests over the line in the future.” 

Just to ram home the point, Thomas’ publicist sat down with her at Tussock Café, and took out her notebook and recorder. 

But I had my own notebook of questions.

First up, I wanted her to know that a lot of students don’t feel like they know her, in the way that Victoria University students know their vice chancellor.  

In my three years studying at Massey, I’ve never seen Thomas around campus or at student events – and many have told me the same. 

She didn’t agree. 

“I'm not sure I am behind closed doors ... I try to locate myself in the cafés if I possibly can so that people can come up and have a chat.”   

But she didn’t attend any of the recent O-Week events.  

“Yeah, well I have a busy schedule but if I can, I do try and get to those sorts of things.” 

Thomas occasionally holds staff forums to consult on staff and course cuts. Often, these forums happen without student knowledge. But why not hold forums for students to say how they feel about their courses and teachers being cut?  

“I'm open to considering that but I have to say I'm kind of pretty busy.”   

She says her deputy vice-chancellor of student engagement, Tere McGonagle-Daly, holds things like student forums and spent a lot of time engaging with the student association. 

She went on to say that McGonagle-Daly would be someone I, as the Massive editor, will “know very well”. You would think so as he is the head of student engagement... I've never spoken to the man.  

She says there are student reps on the council and academic board to account for the student voice.  

While Thomas says “students” (emphasis on the plural), there is one student seat on the Massey council. Leaving the vote 12 to 1. The academic board is similar, with student seats being outnumbered 35 to 5. At the academic board meetings, there is no allocated time for these students to speak. Students must submit an agenda item and are restricted to stay on topic. 

Thomas argues all proposals for change involved students through the pro vice chancellor in charge. The main form of consultation open to students was through a Massey email, through which students got vague responses, if any at all.  

I also asked Massey’s student association general president, Hennessey Wilson, if he’d seen the university hold anything like student forums. His answer was a flat “No”. 

“Her style of leadership and the decisions she's making show that she's completely out of touch with her own staff and her own students.” 

Wilson says the association requested to meet with Thomas and the pro vice chancellors about cuts last year. “Not a single one of those requests were meet with an invitation for a meeting, apart from the head of science who actually agreed to meet us but then ghosted us after that.”  

He says Tere McGonagle-Daly agreed to meet the student association once a month. “He often misses the meetings and it’s sort of like talking to a brick wall.”  

Thomas’ busy schedule gets her an impressive pay slip. She was last reported to earn $586,000 dollars annually, over $100,000 dollars more than the Prime Minister's salary. Her pay has been under constant debate, many arguing she should take a pay cut to help the university. 

“I don't think too much about my salary,” she says.   

“I get a set salary from the Public Service Commission through our council. What I do with my money after I get it in my bank is my business and no one's ever going to know what I do with it.” 

But the question hovering in my mind, and many others, is if Thomas will be making cuts to the College of Creative Arts this year. She carefully maneuvers around this question. “I cannot ever rule out that we won't engage in some staff reduction.”  

However, you could argue all vice chancellors have to make tough decisions, hired to perform a ‘bad guy’ job. Thomas laughs at this honest remark. She received death threats and hate last year. She says, “I'm a human like everybody.”  

But she focuses on making the university great. Her second five-year term finishes in 2027 and she intends to stick around for it.  

The interview ended with pleasantries and polite goodbyes. Her media training showed, but I was satisfied, getting to ask the questions I wanted. Thomas should do more interviews – she’s good at them.