Ex-Glagow uni boss spent over £93k on business class flights and luxury hotel stays

Former chancellor and vice-principal of Glasgow university spent just under £100,000 on travel expenses before stepping down from his position last September.

Sir Anton Muscatelli, who was on a salary of over £400,000 a year, spent £99,104 on travel expenses including business class flights and luxury hotels in just under three years.

via YouTube under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0

Freedom of Information requests submitted by the Sunday Mail found the ex-vice-principal’s travel spending included £67,530 on business class flights to places including New York, Saudi Arabia, India, Australia and China. Over six grand was spent on a single flight to Boston.

£18,565 was spent on hotel stays, with £1577 spent on Truss hotel in Times Square in New York. Large amounts of money were also spent on stays at the Gleneagles hotel and the Sofitel Sydney Darling Harbour and the Leela hotel in Mumbai. The University of Glasgow did not provide information on dates or the length of any of these stays.

The information was acquired by the Sunday Mail following an  eight month battle with the university as they didn’t immediately provide the ex-vice-principal’s expenses.

The figures provided by the university span from April 2023 until last year when Muscatelli retired from his position as Chancellor and vice-principal.

This is during a time where many universities across Scotland are facing major financial difficulties. This has been connected to a drop in international students in recent years.

Many Scottish universities are having to cut costs including staff to make ends meet with any also facing strike action due to staff cuts.

Mary Senior, an official for UCU said that many Scottish universities are taking strike action in opposition of job cuts and calls on the Scottish government to better fund higher education to protect jobs as well as emphasising that university principals need to minimise their expenses.

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She said: “It’s really difficult then for staff in universities to see university principals across the sector, including at Glasgow, be awarded excessive pay and claiming sky high expenses for business class travel.

“Travel and promoting the university is part of any principal’s role, but at a time when the sector is under real strain, principals need to cut their cloth accordingly and minimise their own pay and expenses.”

via Unsplash

The ex-chancellor and vice principal also argued for changes to Scottish higher education funding saying: “Scotland needs to work out what it wants from higher education and decide how to pay for it.”

The university has seen an increase in revenue over the last year from £958.6 million to almost £1.05 billion. However, University of Glasgow finance director, Gregor Caldow, said, despite high revenues, international student numbers are becoming “difficult to forecast.”

The most recent figures form the Higher Education Statistics Agency show international student numbers are down 12 per cent from the previous year.

A spokesperson for the University of Glasgow said: “The principal is responsible for the strategic leadership and direction of the University, which requires travel.”

Anton Muscatelli and University of Glasgow were contacted for comment.

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