Last month it was revealed that Principal Sir Gerry McCormac accepted a £68,000 pay rise during the cost-of-living crisis.
This also happened whilst UCU strikes were taking place, and to add even more insult to injury, whilst there was student accommodation rent increases.
It’s almost laughable how insulting the timing of the pay rise is to both the staff and students at Stirling University.
And hey, I wasn’t in the meetings, maybe poor Gerry was forced to have this pay rise. Maybe he adamantly protested the injustice of it all – after all the University’s statement told us that courageously Gerry had declined any increase determined by the Remuneration Committee for the past eight years.
Big round of applause for Gerry. Here is a fun but also depressing list of things that Gerry could spend his pocket money on.
Things that a Stirling Student could buy with Gerry’s pay rise:
- If your rent is £500 per month, it’s 136 months of rent.
- Based on a £30 weekly shop, it’s 2267 weekly food shops. That’s 43 years.
- With that money, you could get 17,000 Red Card Wednesday tickets.
- Alternatively, it’s 360 yearly gym memberships to the sports centre.
- For English, Welsh, and NI students, it’s 7.4 years of tuition.
- For Scottish students on the lowest maintenance loan, it’s 11 years of SAAS.
- For the most expensive ticket for Scotland’s opening match against Germany in the Euros, Gerry could take 136 people.
- He could also buy the most expensive VIP package to see Taylor Swift at Murrayfield 103 times.
- It’s also the cost of making 101 editions of Brig Newspaper.
I think what is most disturbing about his £68,000 pay rise is the fact that it was a 1.5 per cent pay rise, meaning he now annually earns £363,000 as of the 2022/23 Financial Statements. If I wrote an article on things Stirling Students could pay for with that amount, we’d be here all day.
This was a pay rise given to all staff on campus, however, if a 1.5 per cent increase is £68,000, that is simply unnecessary.
With a student accommodation rent increase of nine per cent last year it begs the question of where this pay rise is being funded from.
Now, I’m sure Gerry probably won’t remember what we wrote in the University’s student newspaper about it or the tweets from affronted students. But students will not forget that while they struggled to eat and heat their flats, their principal received a £68,000 pay rise. They will remember the frustration and anger and tears as the University once again shows what the priority is.
Featured Image Credit: University of Stirling