How big was your pay rise last year? Statistics show that most of us scored somewhere between non-existent and paltry. Unless, that is, you were the boss of a British university.

Try these figures out for size:

• Steve West, vice-chancellor of the University of the West of England, saw his overall compensation leap by £52,434 to £314,632.

• Malcolm Grant, the outgoing head of University College London, racked up a £41,077 hike in his salary and pensions to £365,432 – for working three days a week.

• Craig Calhoun at the LSE took a total of £466,000. Of that, £88,000 covered his relocation from the US, but that still leaves him on almost £100,000 more than the previous director.

In the Russell Group, basic pay for bosses jumped by an average of over £20,000 last year, to nearly £293,000. Chuck in pension contributions and that goes up to £318,500.

At the same time, vice-chancellors insist their staff accept a 1% pay rise – which, after inflation, means a pay cut – as any more would be "unaffordable". Young researchers get stuck on temporary, low-paying contracts. University cleaners and support staff are bundled off to outsourcing companies that don't even give sick pay (one of the issues that has pushed cleaners at Soas in London to go on strike this week). And students sink deeper into debt to pay for the tripling of course fees and rising rents.

Were I a banker seeking to distract the public from my troughing for bonuses, I could hope for no better foil than a university vice-chancellor. Indeed, the two groups share behavioural tics.

In good times, they justify mega-pay as the going rate for "talent". In bad times, they just take the cash – Southampton's Don Nutbeam celebrated a 13% plunge in undergraduate recruitment with a £19,015 rise. And as with the City, higher education's new elite now receive repeated pleas from Vince Cable to rein in their excesses. The business secretary and his universities minister, David Willetts, wrote last month: "We are concerned about the substantial upward drift of salaries of some top management. We want to see leaders in the sector exercise much greater restraint." Cable has been singing that refrain since 2010; it always falls on deaf ears.

Forming before our eyes is a new breed of academic fat cat. Except that, with a handful of exceptions, these academics stopped teaching or researching decades ago and now bob about from campus to campus: cutting here, screwing things up there before moving on to the next debacle. And as with fat cats everywhere, these men (and they are nearly always men) have manoeuvred themselves right by the cash till – all the better to dip their paws in.

Universities are awash with money. In its latest forecast, the English regulator talks of institutions enjoying "sound surplus levels, good cash balances and healthy and increasing reserve levels". University bosses are pocketing as much of that surplus as they can get away with, claiming they "still earn significantly less" than their counterparts in America and Australia. But so, for that matter, do rank-and-file academics. As for the students, OECD figures show the US spends on them nearly double what the UK does.

I'm willing to bet £9,000 that no teenager wavering over their Ucas form has ever picked a university because of its vice-chancellor. No matter: HE managers now pose as CEOs, deserving of similar pay and perks. Take the Open University's Martin Bean, the highest-paid boss of the lot, on £407,000: he's advertising for a £45,000-a-year speechwriter to seek out "exciting new platforms". It's only a matter of time before some Russell Group head gets his own Learjet.

Yet CEOs of public companies are answerable to their shareholders and customers. Not so university fat cats. While academics are audited more than ever before – loaded up with paperwork, expected to make "academic impact" – their bosses enjoy the bare minimum of oversight.

At Royal Holloway, where students are petitioning against their principal's pay, Paul Layzell's salary is partly determined by an appraisal of his performance – an appraisal between two people, one of whom is Paul Layzell. When the pay recommendations go before the college council, the student reps have to leave the room. So much for the coalition's bold new era of the student as customer and the customer as king.

For a man who doesn't welcome dissent, try Birmingham's David Eastwood. He's won special powers to remove from committees anyone he doesn't like. And he appears not to like a lot of people: Birmingham academics last year voted to strike against "aggressive" management tactics, while students planning peaceful marches have been sent heavy-handed letters. Not coincidentally,Eastwood is one of the highest paid VCs of the lot, earning almost three times as much as the prime minister.

Neutering the fat cats requires more than Vince Cable's pleading. Senior management remuneration reports should be published before their discussion. University governance councils should have more student and staff members. And HE bosses should be in post for a maximum number of years – before returning to academic work. That way, you might get people in charge who actually care about their staff, students and institutions – rather than lining their own pockets.