Thank you for this post. However, I don't understand the methodology here. You write that you don't take Kernohan's advice to look at the last three years, because of the pandemic. But if you wanted to avoid distortions due to the pandemic, why did you choose the year 2020/1 to focus on? That seems like the year most likely to be skewed by the pandemic.

Also, what precise question are the yes/no answers to? Is it "Can the university afford a pay increase of this size while retaining an operating surplus?" That seems consistent with the answers you've given.

But in that case: You'll have seen that HESA data is now available for 2021/2. Taking that year as a snapshot, the answers for your sample institutions all become No (7); No (9); No (11) - except that there is no data for Keele.

You might be surprised to see that Anglia Ruskin is the only one in that sample that is in surplus for 2021/2 (£1.019m). But it wouldn't be after paying a 7% increase in its staff costs of £128m, which would be £8.99m.

Using Kernohan's tool, you can see that for most institutions the 2021/2 figures are consistent with the general non-pandemic trends, and the year you've selected, 2020/1 is the outlier. In that year, universities were doing everything they could to save money that year out of fear of the pandemic, plus remote learning reduced many costs, plus student intake was unusually high, etc.

I want the best possible pay deal, of course, but this analysis seems wildly overoptimistic to me. I hope I haven't missed something (or, in some ways, I hope I have).