Simple answer for that. University pay scales tend to be fairly inflexible in terms of which grades you are eligible for without a PhD, if you are counted as ac

Simple answer for that. University pay scales tend to be fairly inflexible in terms of which grades you are eligible for without a PhD, if you are counted as academic staff. If you're non-academic staff (like the cleaner, the receptionist, and the central IT sysadmin) then you can be paid a fair wage based upon your experience, but if you are academic staff, then you have a hard ceiling without a PhD. An individual research group with a grant may only be able to hire academic staff, but they want a sysadmin, so in order to be able to pay them more than a pittance they would have to have a PhD.