Nigel Not So Thrifty Now!

Warwick University boss Professor Nigel Thrift has had a five per cent pay rise, taking his salary to a whopping £332,000.

The rise from last year’s salary of £316,000 comes after lecturers and other university staff have stage strikes in protest at pay levels.

Members of lecturers’ union the University and College Union and support staff unions Unison and Unite took action in November. They were angry about a one per cent pay offer – and said a series of below inflation annual pay offers meant that pay had dropped 13 per cent behind living costs since 2008.

This pay increase comes on the back of an additional £42,000 pay rise in February last year and has sparked outrage amongst students. Nigel Thrift is paid more than double than Prime Minister David Cameron.

Daily, he receives a tidy £909 and with the £16,000 increase he could have sponsored 666 African children this year.

Nigel won’t be seen in any thrift shops with that hefty pay rise.

Lecturers took to the streets to protest against the lack of increase to their wages.

An anonymous second year History student said: “Jesus Christ, not again!!!! The university isn’t that good! Why is he getting all these pay rises while lecturers and seminar tutors have to strike to get a measly 1% increase? It’s unfair.

Psychology student Gaby Brogan’s had equally strong views. She said: “This really shows the marketisation of secondary eduction. It is becoming more and more of an industry and less of a vocation and less about the eduction of the next generation.

“Why am I paying £9,000 a year? To pay Nigel Thrift? No! Funding needs to be redistributed to academic departments and lecturers to better the quality of this university’s education.”

Nice hat love!

Dhruv Surya, a Maths student, shrugged off the controversy, saying: “To be honest, I don’t really care about the pay increase. There are around 22,000 undergraduate students at Warwick and they are all paying £9,000 a year so relatively, the amount of money paid to the vice chancellor is nothing.”

Some good calculations there by Dhruv!

Finally fellow Maths student Labib Shahriar displayed his disgust on the situation. He said: “What does the vice-chancellor even do? He is just a figure head for the university. He is a bit like the Queen, nice to have but fairly useless. He doesn’t even teach!”

Guess Macklemore won’t have to worry about old Nige popping down the Thrift Shop any time soon, but what do you think? Comment below to share your thoughts with The Tab.