Unis Can’t Spend Millions On Marketing Campaigns?

Unis Can’t Spend Millions On Marketing Campaigns? Get Over It!

Students are calling for one central agency to be established to promote tertiary education in New Zealand and put an end to tertiary institutions’ wasteful marketing campaigns.

“Allowing tertiary institutions to spend whatever they want on marketing and advertising is clearly not serving students, government or taxpayers well,” said Andrew Campbell, Co-President of the New Zealand University Students’ Association (NZUSA). “We want there to be one body that promotes tertiary education and has the aim of increasing participation.”

As part of their submission to the Tertiary Education Advisory Commission (TEAC), NZUSA is recommending that public tertiary education institutions be prevented from spending money to advertise and promote themselves. Instead, there should be one body that promotes all tertiary education formed as part of the Tertiary Education Commission.

This measure would mean that government could increase the levels of funding to tertiary education with confidence that the money would be spent on improving quality and access to tertiary education.

“Universities need to be able to show that increased government funding would not be spent on the kind of lavish branding campaigns we have seen in recent years. It is ironic that institutions such as Otago University claim that they cannot afford to freeze their fees next year, but they can afford to re-launch their million dollar advertising campaign a month out from the fee freeze deadline,” said Andrew Campbell.

“If tertiary institutions had a central agency to promote education, it would mean that they could focus tuition funding on providing high quality courses,” said Campbell. “The government should then meet their part of the bargain by increasing funding while still requiring institutions to freeze or lower fees.”

“Students don’t want a logo, they want an affordable quality education.”

“The government and tertiary institutions need to work together to ensure that extra funding goes to where it is needed most – to decrease fees and improve quality.”

ENDS

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