THE Scottish Greens are making a parliamentary bid to cap soaring executive pay at Scotland’s colleges and universities.

Redundancies in the sector have mounted over the last year — for instance Dundee University has required an unprecedented Scottish government bailout and the University of Edinburgh embarked on a £140 million cuts programme, the largest in the sector’s history.

Meanwhile, Colleges Scotland warned that after a 20 per cent cut in funding over the last five years, 11 colleges face “effective insolvency” in 2026.

Despite this, City of Glasgow College principal Paul Little coins in about £200,000 a year, while Edinburgh principal Peter Mathieson nets some £420,000.

At the second reading of the Tertiary Education & Training Bill in Holyrood this week, the Greens will table an amendment to ensure the highest paid in the sector cannot earn more than 10 times that of the lowest paid.

Party co-leader Ross Greer said: “This is a simple matter of fairness. Why should university vice-chancellors and college principals rake in obscene salaries when so many of the staff who make their institutions great are trapped in spirals of low wages and redundancies?”