Why Tertiary Institutions Still Market Themselves

Dr Sandra Grey of the TEU asks in this release:

“Why would tertiary institutions spend all this public money promoting themselves when many of them are complaining that they have too many students already?”

And seems to present a compelling point. The bums on seats funding incentives of the early 2000s have been reduced. Why spend money attracting students they can’t enroll? But if one thinks hard one can come up with a few reasons why this is happening.

The most important I think is this; universities despite funding changes, are still competing for students. However, they aren’t competing for bums on seats anymore, they are in competition with one another for the good students. I am deliberately being vague by what I mean by good.

Now that enrolment caps are in place, it means that institutions have to target those of academic talent, poster girls and boys to put on glossy brochures, model students from disadvantaged minority groups more aggressively to get them at their institution and not somebody else’s.

There’s more to this. Consider institutions that have university status compared to those that do not. Due to the fact that people often want to go to a “real university” it means that the local polytech has to do a lot to convince a prospective student of its value compared to uni in the big city, especially to the good students who have more choices.

So why are universities spending big money on marketing? Because they want to maintain their image and prestige. Out of all the tertiary institutions in New Zealand, there are only eight universities, and they want to keep up appearances.

They do that by trying to attract the good students of course, but Auckland and Otago in particular have been battling it out for a long time to be the “number one” university in New Zealand. Auckland trying to keep its place in the TES rankings (and running that 1 motif in all its glossy brochures) and Otago going for the PBRF for all its got.

So What?

In this TEU press release, it is intimated that

“This proposal is so unworkable that it is probable the Government has thrown it into a package of very real and serious reductions in work rights so that it can withdraw it and look moderate later,” Helen Kelly proposed.

So what? It’s a standard negotiation tactic that’s the oldest trick in the book. At an auction what bidder starts with a bid that is the highest price they are willing to pay? Unions do this too! They will demand a six percent pay rise say, but settle for four. How is the government being any different?

Teacher Training at Otago

The TEU have drawn attention to Otago University’s plans to cut the number of teacher educators. This move isn’t necessarily because they don’t like teacher educators. I think it’s to do with the fact that the research that is relevant for teacher educators isn’t considered to be “real research” by the government that attracts PBRF funding. So, when it comes to wire over funding, the departments that don’t generate as much PBRF government income are the first to be targeted for budget cuts. I suspect if teacher colleges knew this sort of thing was going to happen they would have held out against the trend of becoming part of universities for a lot longer.

I recall (earlier post here) that the Education faculty at the University of Canterbury was at risk of being ”fined”  if they did not attract enought PBRF funding for the university.

UPDATE: Have altered the wording of this post slightly, to reflect that it is government policy that decides which research counts towards PBRF.

eh?

According to this press release, the TEU reckons that the Ministry of Education is going to run a TV programme like MasterChef, except with academics instead of people with culinary skills.

On first glance this seems a rather gimmicky, tacky idea. I imagine that I can’t be the only one thinking that using a “reality” TV show wouldn’t go down well with many academics or the public. I am curious about this shortage of academics. I suspect it’s a bit like the general teacher shortage. As in, there aren’t a shortage of people who are nominally qualified, and want to do the job, but a shortage of academics that universities want. Who would watch it? Everybody eats, so any kind of cooking show is going to have some chance at appealing to the general public. Whereas, academics don’t have that general sort of appeal. Academics live up in their ivory towers and don’t live in the real world, the average person on the street would say. If this programme does show up, I bet it will be in the Sunday morning slot.

On a different note: according to the Something should go here maybe later blog, I am now am ranked at #202 for kiwi based blogs. I’d like to thank you for reading my blog, and for even leaving comments from time to time. I am honoured and flattered to be ranked ahead of so many political blogs, especially considering my own opinions about politics (read this for context).