Exclusive:The 'staggering' £119,000 salary rise for university principal who is now the best paid in Scotland

‘Simply obscene’ hike in pay for Scottish vice chancellor who now earns more than double the UK prime minister

A university has made its principal the best paid in Scotland by handing him a £119,000 salary increase in just two years, The Scotsman can reveal.

The pay of Stirling University’s long-serving boss, Sir Gerry McCormac, has rocketed by 40 per cent from £295,000 in 2022 to £414,000 last year.

His total package, including pension contributions, is now £438,000, up from £320,000 two years ago.

It means Sir Gerry has overtaken Edinburgh University principal Sir Peter Mathieson to become the best paid higher education boss in Scotland.

His salary is also more than double the £166,786 earned by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer.

The increase was branded “simply obscene” last night by Mary Senior, Scotland official at the UCU union, who warned pay hikes for bosses were compounding the financial challenges faced by universities.

There are fears they also undermine repeated calls from the sector for the Scottish Government to implement a more sustainable funding model.

Sir Gerry McCormac, principal and vice chancellor of Stirling University | Jeff Holmes JSHPIX/

The university said Sir Gerry had turned down pay rises in eight of the past ten years, and had donated £120,000 to the Vice-Chancellor’s Fund in the last decade.

The pay rise has emerged as Stirling University warned in its annual report of “multiple, complicated and often intertwining challenges” facing higher education, which demanded that institutions “operated within an increasingly competitive environment while facing growing financial pressures”.

The university posted a surplus before pension adjustments of £6.9 million in 2023/24, down from £11.1m in the previous year.

Sir Gerry has been principal and vice chancellor of the University of Stirling since May 2010.

The Scotsman revealed last year that his pay had increased from £295,000 to £363,000 in 12 months, a 23 per cent rise.

It has now emerged that his salary has risen again, from £363,000 to £414,000, a 14 per cent increase on the previous year.

In the same period his total package, including pension contributions, has gone up from £320,000, to £396,000, to £438,000.

Ms Senior said: “University staff can only dream about getting 14 per cent salary hikes.

“Over the past two years this principal has managed to add almost a staggering £120,000 to his annual earnings. With the extra £24,000 in added benefits he receives, he earns over nine times more than the average worker at the university.

“This level of salary and salary inflation at the top of our universities is simply obscene.

“When Professor McCormac was the convenor of Universities Scotland he talked about there being a ‘chronic funding challenge’ for the sector. Unsustainable salary hikes like this for those at the top compound that challenge.

“UCU is organising a rally at the Scottish Parliament next week to call for fair funding for our universities. University principals creaming off the top do nothing to help the sustainability and long-term future of Scotland’s universities and principals awarding themselves salaries like this deserve to be called out.”

A spokesperson for the University of Stirling said: “The principal’s salary is set by the university's remuneration committee, at a level that is appropriate to the size and scale of the job.

“The principal has been in post for almost 16 years and in eight of the previous ten years, he declined any increase determined by the committee, beyond the national pay award.

“Realignments were implemented in 2022/23 and 2023/24, and the total package includes employer pension contributions, the value of taxable benefits in kind, and takes into consideration comparable packages across the sector.

“Over the past ten years, the principal has donated more than £120,000 to the Vice-Chancellor’s Fund which supports student and staff projects.”

The salary rise means Sir Gerry is now thought to be the highest paid university principal in Scotland.

Previously, that title was held by Sir Peter, the vice chancellor of Edinburgh University, who earns a salary of £362,000, with his package including payment in lieu of employer's pension contributions being £402,000, and his total remuneration being £422,000.

Sir Gerry now earns £84,000 more than St Andrews University principal Dame Sally Mapstone, who gets £330,000, with a total package of £403,000.

His salary is £122,000 higher than that of Aberdeen University’s George Boyne, who receives £292,000, with his total remuneration being £339,000.

At Glasgow University, Sir Anton Muscatelli’s salary is listed as “£0.3m”, with a total package of “£0.4m”, while Richard A Williams at Heriot-Watt is paid £286,000, and a total of £365,000.

Strathclyde University and Dundee University are still to publish their accounts for last year.

In recent weeks, the scale of the financial pressures in much of the higher education sector has been laid bare, with Dundee University’s principal Iain Gillespie resigning last month after revealing the institution was facing a £30m deficit.

A voluntary redundancy scheme opened at Edinburgh University on Monday this week, meanwhile, with the university having warned in its annual report that it faces a challenge that is “greater than in any recent times”.

Robert Gordon University (RGU) in Aberdeen has told staff it plans to make a further 135 redundancies to ensure its long-term “viability”, despite 130 workers having already left last year under voluntary severance schemes.

In recent weeks, The Scotsman has reported how several Scottish universities recorded deficits in their accounts for 2023/24, including a deficit before other losses of £6.15m at RGU, and a deficit before other gains or losses of £578,000 at Abertay University.

Heriot-Watt University posted a £10.5m underlying deficit for last year, while there was a loss of £14.4m at the University of the West of Scotland, an underlying deficit of £13m at St Andrews University, and of £8.5m at Aberdeen University.