In Strategy 2025: Shaping Tomorrow Together our senior leadership sets the basic metrics of success by which they wish to be judged. Strategic performance indicators include:
- Staff Satisfaction
- Student Satisfaction,
- World University Ranking
- Research Income
- Environmental Sustainability
- Income Generation
- Operating Surplus
None of these targets are being met. Staff satisfaction is at all all time low. Student satisfaction as measured by the National Student Survey has tanked, SFC funding allocations for research and teaching are down. We are slipping in all sorts of international league tables and rankings, and millions of pounds have been wasted on an Oracle ERP system which has failed to deliver some very basic functions like processing payments to suppliers and budgetary reporting for research projects.
The senior leadership team at Heriot-Watt are failing to deliver for anyone but themselves. The annual accounts to year end July 2022 show that the Principal took a very generous raise from £312,000 to 338,000. This is an increase of more than 8% compared to ordinary staff who received a 1.5% in this period on the back of 0% increase in 2020-21.
The accounts reveal that in the same 2 years salary cost of the key management personnel responsible for planning, directing, and controlling the activity of the university rose from £792,000 to £1,125,000, an increase of over 40%. While ordinary working staff struggle our jet set senior leadership team are shamelessly paying themselves more and delivering less.
One of the four cornerstone themes of Strategy 2025 is the building of flourishing communities through positive influence. Safe to say that we are not feeling very inspired or valued at the moment.