Letter: Caledonian cash

DAVID Beeby, executive director of finance, is correct to state (Letters, 2 March) that senior staff at Caledonian University are paid at the same ludicrous rate as comparable universities.

The burgeoning budget for the executive team at universities, while staff are laid off and offered pay rises of 0.5 per cent, shows that we are not all in this together.

Rather than top-down strong leadership at this time, what we need is consensus and inclusion of unions in the decision-making process. Instead we get executive teams with nothing better to do than develop incoherent and morale-busting plans that have led to disputes in Glasgow and Heriot-Watt universities, with more likely to follow.

As for academic leadership, this should be left to the academic leaders rather than those whose main motivation is financial. Beeby's view is that of the highly-paid executive team not the university's, which is based on a collegiate structure with staff protected by academic freedom.

Finally, the independent remuneration committee at Caledonian consists of the principal and four lay members of Court, but in attendance are the university secretary, the executive director of finance and director of human resources.

Though, we suppose that each leaves when their individual salaries are discussed, we do wonder why the staff representatives to Court are never involved as then this deeply secretive system may become transparent if not fair.

Mary Senior

University and College Union Scottish official

Edinburgh