With students facing massive increases in their fees, Dispatches investigates the pay, perks and privileges enjoyed by universities’ top earners.

Journalist Laurie Penny reveals the increasing commercialisation of higher education and asks what happens when universities scour the globe for students and funds.

Watch the programme here.

With the brief statement below the principal announced that  the University of Stirling is making 17 staff compulsory redundant, the first time in it’s  40+ year history.  The number includes 9 Technicians, effectively over 37% of Technical support.

The University has taken action to secure a strong and sustainable future for the Institute of Aquaculture, following a comprehensive review of its operations.

During this detailed review and consultation process, which lasted several months, the University identified operational savings and enhanced income generation that reduced the Institute’s original recurring deficit of over £2 million to £1.4 million.

However, in the face of continued financial losses at the Institute and the remaining £1.4 million deficit, the University has taken the difficult decision to cut 17 staff posts from a total complement of 69. The staff whose posts are being made redundant include academic and support staff working at the Institute’s base in Stirling. This decision was approved by University Court today (21/03/11).

The decision will not affect the provision of core services, or student supervision, and all four of the Institute’s key research groups have been retained.

This action will ensure the Institute remains the leading international centre in its field, by focusing on its core research activities and enhancing the Institute’s ability to grow its income and sustain its global reach.

Professor Gerry McCormac
Principal and Vice-Chancellor

The University of Stirling has lost a tribunal case brought by the UCU over the redundancy negotiations last year.

See the BBC Scotland News for more information

Also, see the UCU website for more information.

We have 3 member nominated trustees at the moment: Viv Alexander (retired member), Bruce Sutherland (retired member) and myself, Bill Jamieson (active member).

Bruce’s term of office expires at the end of July and we are looking for someone to replace him. We are entering a potentially difficult period for the University pension scheme and it would be useful to have a full complement of member nominated trustees.

If anyone is interested, please let me know.

There is also a vacancy for a Unite member on the Staff Charities committee. The main task being the yearly disbursement of funds to nominated charities. One of the more rewarding committees to be on! You need to be a Unite member and a contributor to the Staff Charities Fund.

Bill Jamieson

From Herald Scotland

University principals in Scotland have accepted salary increases of nearly 8% on ­average, at a time when higher education is dealing with the tightest financial settlement since devolution.

A new web site has been set up by the 5 unions above to tackle the crisis in higher education please read the information on the site to keep up to date with the current situation and if you have any questions please contact one of the Unite reps; George MacLeod, Jim Fleming or Jim Fraser
The crisis in education

• a wave of job cuts is already sweeping through our universities
• 99 universities have said they intend to cut jobs
• employers are offering a pay increase of just 0.5% – undermining recent progress on pay.

Read the latest Scottish Pensioners Forum Newsletter.

Below is a statement by John Markey (Facilities Manager E&CS) regarding car parking (27/2/08). There are a number of points to note however;

1. It is difficult to get emission data for vehicles older than 2001 and London for example will estimate this using engine size, indeed the DVLA will continue to tax pre 2001 vehicles based on engine size. Therefore larger vehicles pay more.
2. The Unions maintain that the scheme has failed to solve the problem of illegal parking in the last eight years and the 70% increase in offences (stated in point 2) verifies this.
3. The Campus Unions have not agreed to these proposals.
4. There are still only limited alternatives e.g. car share and reduced season bus tickets which do not suit the majority of staff or students.
5. Alumni and Community members of the Sports Centre get a free car parking permit

… I would like to confirm the following:

• The new car park charges are been linked to the CO2 emissions of the vehicles engine not the engine size (cc) as has been quoted. The primary reason for introducing this form of charging was to link parking and transport to environmental issues. For those vehicles older than 2001 there are relevant databases which we can access to check emissions.
• There has been a 70% increase in the amount of individuals abusing the disabled car parks on the campus and as a result we are proposing to change the regulations so that on such offence will lead to an immediate ban.
• Due to the continuing abuse of parking at Alansgrange and Friarscroft by non residents in these area we are proposing to extend the permit scheme to restrict parking to residents only.
• There also appears to be a misunderstanding with some people as to what we are doing with regard to a root and branch review of the parking rules and regulations, what I said was that we would be reviewing all areas of the regulations and gave examples of things that we will look at but not necessarily introduce. I also gave an undertaking to look at the possibility of involving a wider group in this when we begin the process.

It was my understanding that there was an agreement with the changes we propose to make with regard to disabled parking and the extension of the parking scheme to the student residences above. I was also led to believe that you agreed in principle with idea of linking the permitting scheme to carbon emissions and that your primary concern was the increase in the permit fee for some members of staff. I also stated at the meeting that at present we are projecting at least a £5K deficit for car parking at the end of the year as a result of an increase in operating costs. So as to address your concerns with regard to the increase in costs I have spent some time reviewing the initial proposed fee scale and have come up with a new scale that will reduce the cost of the banding but will still allow us to generate a surplus for reinvestment into travel initiatives. The new charges are indicated below:

Vehicle Emission Figures CO2 (g/Km)	Original Proposed Fee	Expected Uptake	New Proposed Fee
Up to 120	£60	8%	£60
121 to 150	£90	18%	£90
151 to 165	£120	30%	£100
166 to 185	£150	25%	£110
Over 185	£195	19%	£120

These hew figures would I hope generate a surplus of approx £20K, it would mean that 26% of individuals would pay the same or less than they currently do. The remainder would pay between £10 and £30 extra per annum. I hope that these changes would be more acceptable to you and your members and that the above comments clarify some of the issues raised since our meeting.

Regards John

The University management have released their latest proposed increases to the car parking fees (see table below).

As you can see their intention is to link the fees to the emissions data for your car which could prove to be far more difficult that they expect especially for cars built before 2001. The overall effect of these proposed changes would be that 90% of the staff and students who use the car park will be charged between £90 and £120 with only a very small minority going down to £60. In effect most will see an increase. The University has a deficit of £5000 in the car parking budget and is looking to staff and students to pay more to cover this.

The proposed charges which are based on environmental grounds once again take no account of non staff/student vehicles coming onto campus so in effect we will still be subsidising the car park for the use of the general public.

The car parking scheme was designed to tackle the issue of illegal parking on campus and in this respect it has clearly failed and we believe the new proposals will again fail to solve this problem.