Principal’s pay rise gives him £205,000

Stirling Uni’s Principal has courted controversy again after landing a 6% pay rise.

Gerry McCormac now gets paid £205,000 a year, although he will be giving the extra new money to a fund to help students.

And if you think that £205,000 sounds like an obscenely large amount to give to a man who most students probably wouldn’t recognise if he walked past them, then The Tab has created a simple explanation so you can see just how modest a pay packet the Principal has:

For comparison’s sake, Alex Salmond earns £140,000 a year. David Cameron rakes in £142,000.

McCormac will, according to a spokesman, be giving the extra new money (indirectly) to students. But rather than supporting the well-established Student Hardship Fund, the money will go to The University of Stirling Vice-Chancellor Fund.

The fund, which McCormac himself founded in August 2013, will “provide a source of unrestricted and immediate funding for all aspects of university life that support the student experience.”

His charitable move  comes after he was widely criticised for sprucing up his luxury campus home while seventeen staff lost their jobs.

But these vague promises of money well spent have not placated angry staff who are still striking over their own pay.

January’s strike action could have disrupted resit and deferred exams, although at the time the University’s official Facebook page reassured students that “minimal disruption” would occur and “arrangements have been made to ensure cover”.

The protests follow on from last semester’s strike action, and is centred around the decision to offer just a 1% pay rise for university staff across the country.

Mary Senior, the Scotland Official of the University & Colleges Union, said: “Staff working at Stirling University will be frustrated to learn that their principal enjoyed a six per cent pay rise last year at the same time that he was telling them that they had to accept one percent because finances were tight.”

McCormac’s salary is one of many Principals’ wages across the country that have seen a hike this year – Heriot-Watt’s Professor Steve Chapman got a 24% pay rise to put him on £210,000.