Spending by the University of Edinburgh’s college offices — the management tier that sits above its schools — rose by a third in the year staff were told £140m had to be cut, The Student can reveal.
The Student broke down £1.81bn of departmental spending across the 2023/24 and 2024/25 financial years, as the University’s leadership faces mounting scrutiny over strikes and programme closures that have drawn national attention.
The three college offices spent £49.3m in 2024/25, up £12.3m on the year before, according to financial data obtained via Freedom of Information (FOI) requests. The figures include research spending and do not show exactly what the extra money paid for.
Expenditure by the Science and Engineering office surged by 75 per cent, the biggest rise of all 32 departments, while the Medicine and Veterinary Medicine office also increased its spending by more than half.
For the schools and centres beneath them, it was a different story. Their outlays rose 4.5 per cent, only modestly ahead of inflation.
In Science and Engineering, four of the college’s seven schools – Geosciences, Informatics, Physics and Astronomy, and Mathematics – spent £8.2m less between them, even as the office above them spent £4.4m more.
A University spokesperson said “these are not restructuring costs,” pointing to the figures as including “other income generating activities, and other non-teaching related activities as well as spend on teaching.”
However, they did not specify where the money went.
The University’s own annual accounts show the number of staff paid more than £100,000 rose from 385 to 427 over the same year. Around four in ten are clinical academics, whose pay includes NHS awards.
The figures land as staff continue a five-week strike over the cuts drive, which the University and College Union (UCU) has branded “unnecessary” and warns could cost up to 1,800 jobs.
A central argument in the union’s dispute has been that the University’s financial woes have been “manufactured.” It also blames what it calls mismanagement, including excessive capital spending.
One motion submitted for next week’s senate meeting has urged the University’s senior leadership to “reconsider” its decisions.
Photo by Mafalda Moura on Unsplash.
