Dale speaks to education correspondent Calum Ross about the levels of pay for principals at Scotland's universities
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00:00Hello and welcome to the Scotsman's Daily Video Bulletin for this Thursday.
00:05My name's Dale Miller. I'm Deputy Editor of the Scotsman and I'm joined by our Education Correspondent Callum Ross.
00:12Callum, I'll get to talking to you very shortly because we're looking at the front page of today's paper,
00:18and it is your exclusive story of a £119,000 pay rise given to a university principal over the course of the next two years.
00:29It's been branded obscene. We're going to talk about that in detail shortly.
00:34We've also got the image of the very tragic incident involving a six-year-old girl,
00:41her and her father found dead in a West Calder property earlier this week.
00:46You can read both those stories, including our exclusive, at Scotsman.com.
00:52And Callum, before we get into the splash, I do have to let all our viewers and readers know that there has been a red weather warning issued for parts of Scotland tomorrow.
01:05It'll last from 10am on Friday until 5pm on Friday.
01:09It covers much of the central belt, including Glasgow, Edinburgh, significant parts of the Lothians and Dumfries and Galloway,
01:17and even touches on a bit of Fife as well and areas like Falkirk, etc.
01:22Please read the advice. We believe it's the first red weather warning for the parts of the UK in seven years.
01:30So this is a significant weather event and one that everyone should pay attention to.
01:36So please, you can get all the latest updates on that at Scotsman.com.
01:41Read the advice, take precautions, tying things down in the backyard of the property, etc.
01:47It will be a significant one and we will bring you all the latest from that storm over the next 24 to 48 hours.
01:54Callum, away from that, I want to talk about your exclusive splash.
01:59Can you tell us a bit about the background to this as well?
02:02Because we know universities have been talking about what financial pressure they're under.
02:09That's right, Dale. We've been writing pretty much every week lately, haven't we,
02:14about the pressures in Scotland's higher education institutions.
02:19We've had extreme examples like Dundee University, which lost its principal last month, Ian Gillespie,
02:26who resigned after announcing it was facing a deficit of up to £30 million.
02:32We've got Edinburgh University, which just this week opened its voluntary redundancy scheme.
02:40Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen is well down the road of doing the same.
02:44We've had several universities posting deficits in their most recent accounts in the last few weeks.
02:51We've heard repeatedly from the sector that it's now vital that the Scottish Government
02:59reviews the funding model for universities in Scotland.
03:05It's against that backdrop that we're reporting today that Stirling University has handed its principal,
03:13Professor Gerry McCormack, a pay rise in the last two years of £119,000.
03:21In 2022, he was earning a salary of £295,000.
03:27By last year, by 2024, that was up to £414,000, a 40% increase in two years.
03:36That's just his salary. His total package, including the likes of pension contributions and the rest of it,
03:45is now £438,000.
03:49That makes him, we think, the highest paid university principal in Scotland,
03:54overtaking Sir Peter Matheson at Edinburgh University.
03:58It's way more, really, than the likes of the St Andrews University principal, Dame Sally Mapstone,
04:04George Boyne at Aberdeen University.
04:08You mentioned from the front page, the UCU trade union university staff representative, Mary Senior,
04:16described the figures as staggering last night and simply obscene.
04:23Now, the university was quick to point out that it's not Sir Gerry that makes these sort of pay recommendations.
04:30It's their remuneration committee and also that Sir Gerry had turned down previous pay rise offers,
04:39in I think eight out of the last 10 years.
04:44He's also donated £120,000 to the Vice-Chancellor's Fund at Stirling in the last decade,
04:51which helps students through various projects.
04:56We should probably point out that Stirling is not quite in as bad a financial position as some of the others I mentioned.
05:02It posted an operating surplus of £6.9 million in its most recent accounts,
05:10but I think it'll be interesting to see what staff and students at Stirling think about the fact
05:17that they now have the highest paid principal in Scotland.
05:21Just on that, as you mentioned, the last financial year that we have results for,
05:27it was a surplus for the university.
05:29We don't know about the current financial year.
05:31We're expecting that there'll have been greater pressures on Stirling.
05:35That's the optics of it, isn't it?
05:37Because you've got a situation where collectively, and I don't think Stirling has not been involved in this,
05:44that the universities are sending a clear message to government saying we're under the pump
05:50and we have issues financially.
05:52We're having problems bringing in students from overseas,
05:57and we have real concerns about the economic climate,
06:00and then you've got a university doing this.
06:03So, taking the sole university out of it, it does harm the overall collective effort
06:09to get more relief out of government for the sector, doesn't it?
06:12Yeah, it undermines it.
06:14And, you know, Sir Jerry, I think, is a former convener of University of Scotland
06:17who would have been making those points when he was convener,
06:21and we're hearing it all the time from the sector.
06:24You know, I think universities are kind of in a strange position.
06:27They're sort of kind of halfway between the public sector and private sector, aren't they?
06:31They've got huge staffs and huge incomes and turnovers,
06:35and some of the principals, you know, behave like chief execs of big corporations,
06:41but, you know, they're also dealing with hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers' money.
06:46So, you know, there's an expectation there that they'll act with a bit of restraint as well.
06:53You can read that full story at scotsman.com.
06:56Any of Callum's coverage is available by going to the Education tab in the navigation bar,
07:02and you can follow us online and via social media, Facebook, X, Instagram and Blue Sky.
07:09I do want to reiterate that alert on the red weather warning
07:14that will be in place from 10 a.m. on Friday until 5 p.m. on Friday as well.
07:19It affects much of the Central Belt, including parts of the Lothians and Dumfries and Galloway.
07:24It's one to prepare for, and you can read all the latest at scotsman.com over the next 24 hours.
07:30Thanks to you, Callum. Thanks to all our viewers and readers for joining us.