Online Editor
The University of Glasgow has more six-figure salaried employees than any other university in Scotland, a study has found.
The study from the Taxpayers’ Alliance revealed that Glasgow University has the seventh highest number of employees earning over £100,000 per annum across UK universities as a whole, with eighty employees earning more than the British Prime Minister.
The study comes at a time when student services are coming under increasing pressure to save money in order to fund the £750 million campus redevelopment, as well as coinciding with an incoming rise in tuition fees for English, Welsh and Northern Irish students.
The Taxpayers’ Alliance used Freedom of Information requests to access the financial information of six thousand British educational institutions. They found that the University of Glasgow employs fifteen individuals on a salary exceeding £200,000 per annum. This is significantly larger than the University of St Andrews and the University of Strathclyde which each employ just two individuals on a salary greater than £300,000. The University of Edinburgh has the second highest number of employees earning above this amount in Scotland, with five.
A statement from the Taxpayers’ Alliance commented: “Central government funding of teaching in higher education has declined in recent years with more and more of the cost of tuition being met by students. However, despite reductions in funding per students, salaries in many higher education institutions are amongst the highest in the public sector, raising questions over student value for money.”
A spokesman for the University told The Glasgow Guardian: “As a major institution we need experienced, professional staff at all levels to deliver the world class teaching and research environment that is the hallmark of the University of Glasgow.”
Glasgow University was also the only institution out of the six thousand surveyed to charge a fee for collecting the data. A spokesperson for the Taxpayers’ Alliance told The Glasgow Guardian: “They said that getting the information to respond to the FOI would take slightly longer than the 18 hours allowed by the Act so they would have to charge us for the excess time spent on it.” The fee amounted to £16.38.
