Over 400 members of staff at Scotland’s universities earn more than the first minister, despite a funding crisis engulfing the sector that could see lower paid roles axed.
A Ferret analysis as part of our Who Runs Scotland series found at least 400 university staff are paid more than John Swinney, whose combined MSP and first ministerial salary is £135,605.
In total 1,250 members of staff across the country’s 15 universities were paid more than £100,000 per year.
This figure puts them in a bracket with some of the highest earners in the country. Our analysis showed just under three per cent of the total Scottish university workforce earns upwards of £100,000. Their annual salaries collectively cost £175m per year.
That is equivalent to nearly a quarter of the main teaching grant – the biggest chunk of funding universities receive from the Scottish Government.
A number of universities across the country have announced that they are making cuts, including to jobs. Growing staff costs are one of the factors blamed, alongside a stagnation in government funding and a drop in the recruitment of international students.
Universities Scotland, which represents the higher education sector, said institutions need to pay enough to attract “experienced” people to navigate “challenging and volatile operating environments”. That requires salaries that match “market rates across the UK and globally,” the body claimed.
Critics argued that while high pay is not the root cause of the funding crisis, vast salaries for senior staff are difficult to rationalise when students and lower-paid employees are “struggling”. Low pay and job insecurity were endemic problems in the sector, one claimed.
They called for increased public scrutiny to ensure management teams and other top staff are justifying high salaries amid job losses and cuts to programmes.
John Swinney’s pay has remained at £135,605 since 2009, when former first minister Alex Salmond introduced a pay freeze for ministers following the global financial crisis. This freeze was partially lifted in April 2025, but Swinney declined to take the increase.
Pay discrepancy
Our analysis looked at the annual accounts of every Scottish university in 2024, apart from Dundee, for which we used 2023 figures because it is yet to publish accounts for last year.
The University of Edinburgh has the largest workforce of any Scottish institution, and employs 385 staff who earn six figures, including those known as “clinical staff” who work in medicine as well as teaching in education.
This includes principal Sir Peter Mathieson, whose basic salary rose by 2.5 per cent in January to nearly £380,000. The pay rise came just weeks before Mathieson told Edinburgh staff it was seeking £140m in cuts which would result in a “smaller staff base”.
Mathieson has also faced scrutiny for taking a second role at a firm linked to the university, which critics within Edinburgh described as a distraction from tackling the problems facing the institution.
Edinburgh is one of two Scots universities – alongside St Andrews – where the principal is paid more than ten times the median employee.
The University of Glasgow has the second highest number of staff on high salaries, with 350 employees on £100,000 or more and the principal paid nine times the median member of staff.
At Stirling university, principal Gerry McCormac received a basic salary of £414,000, with his full pay and benefits package equating to £438,000, making him the highest paid figure in Scottish academia in 2024.
Dire warnings
A number of institutions across Scotland have announced redundancies. Edinburgh launched a voluntary severance scheme in January and said in February that £140m of cuts to its budget in the next 18 months will mean a “smaller staff base”, with cuts going beyond those who have already left through the voluntary scheme.
On 17 April, principal Mathieson told the BBC that there would have to be a “radical re-wiring” of the way the way the university operates.
Robert Gordon in Aberdeen has already had a round of redundancies and warned more jobs could go, while the University of Dundee is planning to shed over 600 roles – a fifth of its workforce. However, Scottish education minister, Jenny Gilruth, last week said the institution was working with the Scottish Funding Council to bring the total number of job losses down.
Aberdeen has had a programme of voluntary redundancies in recent years and this week announced it would be stopping staff recruitment, pausing promotions and “revisiting” voluntary severance.
Universities Scotland claims the root cause of the financial turmoil is long-term underfunding.
While the Scottish Government increased the main teaching grant by 1.8 per cent in its most recent budget, the body pointed out that this was a real-terms cut.
Public funding per Scottish student has declined in real terms for over a decade, a situation which universities sought to address by attracting more non-EU students who pay tens of thousands in fees.
However, critics say funding shortfalls alone do not explain the scale of cuts at some universities.
Last year saw a sharp drop in the recruitment of international students across the board, especially on postgraduate courses, partly attributed to changes to UK Government visa rules.
Dundee, meanwhile, is believed to have become particularly dependent on fees from Nigerian students, but recruitment from the West African country was impacted by a devaluation of its currency in 2023.
There have also been accusations of mismanagement and “poor investment decisions” at Dundee, with officials telling a Holyrood committee that “misleading” information given to the university’s court meant the perilous state of its finances only became clear in late 2024.
Dundee has been given £22m in funding by the Scottish Government to help stave off the threat of insolvency. An independent investigation into the “rapid deterioration” of its financial position will examine the role that management played.
Meanwhile at the University of Edinburgh, the University and College Union (UCU) branch accused management of creating a “manufactured crisis”. Unlike other universities, Edinburgh is only projecting future deficits and has run surpluses in recent years.
The union says Edinburgh has assets worth over £3bn which, they argue, could be used to help stave off cuts.
High pay for senior staff has become a flashpoint for the union. Sophia Woodman, president of the Edinburgh branch of the UCU, told The Ferret the union had “repeatedly” argued that management could show solidarity and savings could be made “by cutting the salaries of the highest earners including the principal”.
But management said that would have a “negligible” impact on the overall finances, she claimed. Woodman argued its response was “really problematic and disrespectful”.
There was a “real problem with low pay”, she alleged, with the university finding it difficult to recruit cleaners because it was not paying enough. “People on casual contracts and PhD students are really struggling to pay rent and cover their bills,” Woodman added.
She continued: “There’s a lack of accountability about these high salaries and why they are necessary and why it’s a good use of university money to pay people so much.”
An Edinburgh university spokesperson said it was a Living Wage Employer – meaning it pays at least a benchmark hourly rate, currently £12.60 – and was “committed to fair work and pay”. Over 15,000 colleagues had received an “increment progression or payment this year,” they added.
Amid the funding pressures, some university principals have reignited the conversation over tuition fees while Universities Scotland claimed it was time for the debate about higher education funding to “move beyond” the “binary loop of free versus fees”.
Polling suggests Scots are split on the issue of whether those who can afford it should pay for tuition.
But according to Andrew Speke of the High Pay Centre, which focuses on the role high pay plays in economic inequality, it would not be “fair or sensible” to reintroduce fees while top earners at universities “remain untouched”.
Speke added: “The issue of high pay in the university sector has been exacerbated by the marketisation of higher education, and it is therefore unsurprising that those benefiting from this will also be arguing for further marketisation in Scotland.”
He said tackling the issue of high pay would not be enough to tackle the funding crisis facing universities by itself, but “if more equitable pay structures could play a role in cutting costs” then universities should be “encouraged” to implement them.
The president of the National Union of Students in Scotland, Sai Shraddha S. Viswanathan, said it was “frustrating” to hear about management “taking home huge salaries when students and everyday staff are struggling”.
Viswanathan added: “For this crisis to be addressed, Scotland’s higher education system needs to be recognised for what it is: a public good which enriches our society, and needs greater public funding.
“However, it is only reasonable that with increased public funding would come increased public scrutiny and that university management be made to justify what could possibly merit them taking home more money than the first minister.”
In response, most universities referred us to the statement from Universities Scotland, which stressed universities were “multi million pound enterprises” that needed to offer high pay to attract the right level of skills and experience, and were facing “incredibly challenging and volatile” environments.
“Over the last decade alone, senior teams in universities have had to steer institutions through the impact of Brexit and the pandemic, the pressures to leverage more private resources to the current financial headwinds coming from all angles,” a spokesperson said.
Salaries were “commensurate with market rates across the UK and globally”, they added. It claimed that over the last year some universities had seen a reduction in their senior management teams as part of an overall restructure, but insisted this was “a matter for each individual institution”.
In response to enquiries from The Ferret, a spokesperson for the University of Dundee said over half of those earning £100,000 were “clinical staff” who work in both medical and teaching environments.
“Our salaries at all levels are competitive, and are set in relation to the higher education sector not just in Scotland and the UK, but around the world,” they said.
A Scottish Government spokesperson said salary levels were a matter for each university but added: “We expect universities, however, to exercise restraint in setting senior pay.
“Senior pay packages should be in step with the salary, terms and conditions offered to other university staff. Institutions must ensure the highest standards of transparency in setting pay awards.”
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Main image: iStock/krithnarong
The easiest way to lower the multiple is to outsource cleaning, cafeteria, security guard, etc. positions.
Therefore, when showing the principal salary as a multiple of the average staff member salary, it’s important to highlight the impact of outsourcing.
This is to avoid showing institutions that have not outsourced these positions in a negative light, because outsourcing is bad for staff and the university, but makes the multiple look lower. Outsourced staff are basically fired and re-hired on worse terms: worse pensions, unstable employment (as the outsourcing is usually for fixed length periods) and zero hour contracts.