The University of Edinburgh’s vice-chancellor, Sir Peter Mathieson, received a £9,247 pay rise in January, a Freedom of Information Request by The Student has found.
Mathieson’s basic salary now stands at £379,120, making him Scotland’s second highest-paid vice-chancellor, only recently overtaken by the University of Stirling’s Sir Gerry McCormac.
His full remuneration could now stand at nearly £440,000 if his non-salary benefits, such as life cover and payment in lieu of pension contributions, remain at last year’s levels.
An independent Remuneration Committee approved the 2.5 per cent pay rise, which matches the uplift agreed for all staff by the UK-wide Joint Negotiating Committee for Higher Education Staff (JNCHES).
The revelation follows the vice-chancellor’s announcement last month of up to £140 million in planned budget cuts – equivalent to 10 per cent of the university’s yearly turnover – to prevent it falling into deficit in the next year and a half.
These “recurring and sustainable” cuts aim to lower operational and staff costs and include a voluntary severance scheme first announced in November. The scheme closed last month, but further compulsory redundancies have not been ruled out.
The university has said that courses “not proving popular” would no longer be run, while cuts to already greenlit projects are also being considered.
According to its latest annual report, the university had a surplus between income and operational expenditures of £84m for the year to July 2024.
The figure was down by £64m from 2022/23, bringing it to around pre-pandemic levels but below the target of 7-9 per cent of total income.
Several sector-wide challenges have been cited to justify the cuts, including the government’s employers’ national insurance hike, rising inflation, difficulty attracting international students, and insufficient funding for Scottish and other UK-domiciled students.
Universities across the UK are also taking measures to cut spending. Staff at the University of Dundee are at the end of a three-week strike after the university axed 632 jobs and failed to rule out compulsory redundancies as part of plans to plug a £30 million deficit.
UCU Edinburgh, the University and Colleges Union’s Edinburgh branch, has claimed the university’s management is “courting a death spiral” through cuts, stating that they could “undermine [the institution] which they are meant to save”.
The vice-chancellor and all other members of the university’s Senior Leadership Team (SLT) previously took 20 per cent pay cuts in 2020 to help mitigate the rising staffing and non-staffing costs caused by the pandemic.
Since his appointment in 2018, Sir Mathieson refused a pay rise in 2019 and 2022 and was not offered one in 2021, in line with all other university staff.
The Remuneration Committee did, however, approve an increase of 3 and 5 per cent for the past two years, respectively.
The committee decides on SLT pay each January in accordance with a University Court-approved framework and interviews each individual who can accept or reject the decision.
Following the revelation, UCU Edinburgh’s president Sophia Woodman told The Student she was “speechless that he would do this at this moment,” noting that the increase could almost cover the stipend of a PhD student.
She added that university staff who previously suggested voluntary pay cuts for “those on very high salaries” were told it would only result in “negligible savings.”
Factoring in non-salary benefits, Mathieson’s full remuneration for the year preceding 31 July 2024 was 10.1 times the median remuneration of the university’s staff.
As vice-chancellor, Mathieson lives rent- and utility-free in a Regent Street townhouse provided by the university. The £1.7m property serves as both a family home and a venue for hosting university events.
A University of Edinburgh spokesperson told The Student:
“As Principal and vice-chancellor of an ancient and high-profile institution, Professor Mathieson is ultimately responsible for one of the largest universities in the UK.”
“Since joining in 2018, he has overseen a huge amount of change – navigating the University through a global pandemic and, with colleagues, spearheading new systems and processes to enhance student experience and recognise teaching excellence, while enhancing Edinburgh’s global standing in research.”
In the annual report’s foreword, Mathieson celebrated the university’s world-leading research in sustainability, artificial intelligence, and medical care, as well as the opening of the Edinburgh Futures Institute in June.
However, last year also saw Edinburgh fall to 27th in the 2025 QS World University Rankings, down from a record high of 15th for 2023.
The reputation of the university’s management was also questioned by staff and students alike over the university’s investments in Israeli-linked companies, with students going on hunger strike during a 34-day encampment in the Old College Quad.
A student at the university called the news “a slap in the face,” telling The Student:
“That he got a pay rise is bad enough, but the fact he accepted it is a whole other thing.”
Speaking to The Times late last year, Nick Hillman, director of the Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi), acknowledged that the position is “a big job” but added:
“If vice-chancellors are talking about the underfunding of the sector, it’s very hard for them to make that case to the public if they’re accepting above-inflation pay rises.”
“Peter Mathieson 2019” by Consulate General of Japan in Edinburgh is licensed under CC BY 4.0.
