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The recent academic pay survey (THES, June 6) provided a sensation of "deja vu all over again" (to quote a prominent football manager). Those surveys showing university pay lagging behind comparable professions have been a feature in The THES since it began publishing in 1971.

In 1969 the report of the National Board for Prices and Incomes awarded the universities pay scales inferior to those in the Scottish centrally-funded colleges. The pay standstill came in 1976, producing the "anomaly", and thereafter universities and polytechnics were held back. This was a brilliant piece of Treasury management whereby parity with universities was conceded to the polytechnics on the basis of depreciated or deteriorated university scales.

Public sector pay norms in recent years have led to the achievement of the Treasury's 1968 ambition to pay "nine months' salary for nine months work". In effect university staffs are not being paid for vacation leave which they mostly use for research. Thus, not only are they unpaid for vacation research, they may be threatened with dire consequences if their research output is low! The arithmetic is that the university salary scales are roughly 9/12, of what they ought to be (ie 25 per cent more). What a con!

T.C. Simmonds

Sloane Avenue, London, SW11