Next year’s sabbs, who were elected in March and take up their roles officially this August, will, on paper, become the best-paid full-time sabbatical officers in the country. They’ll have jumped from fourteenth highest-paid sabbs to the highest, beating last year’s highest, LSE, who pay a modest £26,582 a year. Technically, these officer trustee roles are getting a £10,000 or so pay rise in the space of one year (from £20,160 this year to £29,800). It sounds like a lot, but it’s only slightly higher than the 2013 figures for the average Imperial grad’s starting salary (£29,200). If you look at what the current sabbs get in terms of a remuneration package, next year’s cohort may actually be getting a worse deal.

Our calculations

Let’s assume that this will be the first job next year’s sabbs will be getting paid for this tax year (we’ve assumed that they’re on the tax code 1100L, if you’re really interested).

We’ve assumed that they are all home students who took out student loans after 2012 and have finished their degrees, and so will now be paying back some of that loan every month. We’re also assuming they’re not paying into the pension scheme.

This is all a little different for the FELIX editor, who is employed for eleven and a half months, rather than a year and a half like the full-time officer trustees are (your DPWs and Union Presidents, for example).

Their pay will now be £29,800, and our calculations with the above tax code and assumptions using thesalarychecker.co.uk say that sabbs will now be taking home £22,600.

Similar calculations on this year’s salary (pre-2012 student loan repayments and the same tax code) assume that take-home pay is currently £16,600. Yes, obviously twenty-two grand is way more than sixteen, but that’s not the end of the story.

Remuneration package

The current remuneration package (i.e. extra stuff sabbs get ‘paid’ but not in cash) includes a place in halls. They do not have to pay rent; it’s paid directly from the union’s coffers to the college’s. And these aren’t the shitty cheap twin rooms in the basement of Parsons. These can be nice single ensuites in Eastside or Beit if the sabbs choose them (which several have).

Currently, if they don’t want to live in halls, they can have a docked amount of cash to live in halls (typically 75% of what would have been their halls budget, as an incentive to live in halls).

At least two sabbs this year have lived in Beit, so if we take the standard 16⁄17 rents for an en suite room (£220 per week) and take into account the 54 weeks that they are employed, they will need to pay £11,880 worth of rent. Taken off their £22,600 take home pay, sabbs choosing to live in Beit would now only get £10,800, whereas sabbs now take home £16,600 after tax. This obviously means most sabbs will choose to rent privately, and escape the astronomical cost of Imperial’s own accommodation, unless you wanted to live in the un-renovated side of Evelyn Gardens.

To put it another way, for next year’s sabbs to have the same amount of take-home cash as this year’s, they will have to spend just £6400 on rent, which amounts to £110 a week, for the 54 weeks they’re paid. It’s certainly doable, but you’re not going to be in South Kensington for that kind of money.

So why this change?

This year’s sabbs (the Sandon-Allum-Kaye-Howitt-Watson-Chun-Yin-San year) were paid £19,500 per year straight-up, and then given either halls for ‘free’, i.e. as part of their remuneration package, or 75% of the average amount getting spent on putting up sabbs in halls. This cash for private rent was paid to the sabbs directly, so was taxed, meaning they got a significant hit if they chose to live out of halls.

Many people saw this as a good thing, as having sabbs living in halls is arguably a benefit to freshers – everyone on the DPFS’ floor knows what the union is – but the incentive for living in halls has now been completely removed, and from the figures above you can see you’d be a mug to do it.

During the Trustee Board meeting in January at which the change was decided, no sabbs were actually present. They were allowed to contribute to the discussion, but asked to leave whilst the actual decision was made. The minutes of the meeting show that the current sabbs said that “the financial compensation was not a major consideration when putting themselves forward for the role”, but it could put future generations of students, who don’t have saving or family money, off.

Does anyone care how much sabbs get paid, as long as they’re doing a good job? Well, we know that Imperial has some of the best graduate prospects in the country, so get the best people who aren’t all from the same economic background, it’s fair to make the pay, and all that comes with that, at least semi-competitive.