15 November 2012
Analysis by The Australian of the 2011 university finance report recently released the Commonwealth department reveals that Swinburne University had a marketing budget of $13.3 million, the second highest budget after Deakin with $14,273.
But with total higher education enrolments of 23,780 students, Swinburne’s spend seemingly topped the national per student average at $561 compared to Deakin’s $351 per student (Deakin was 3rd, with Charles Drawin coming in 2nd at $415 per student) .
Wollongong University spent only $944, which worked out at a paltry $33.50 per student.
Swinburne is, of course a dual sector university and it says the The Australian significantly overstated Swinburne’s promotional expenditure per student, by taking a figure for marketing expenditure across higher education and TAFE but- dividing it only by the number of higher education students.
In 2011, Swinburne had 33,635 TAFE students in addition to its 23,781 higher education students, for a total institutional student head count of 57,416 – which works out about $231 per head.
The result is that Swinburne’s marketing spend per student was significantly overstated compared to other Australian universities. Other dual sector universities – including Charles Darwin – mentioned in the report had their figures erroneously reported in the same way.
Sector analyst Gavin Moodie (RMIT), says one would expect recruiting universities in 2011 to have had large marketing budgets as they struggle to attract their share of students (RMIT spent $220 pe student).
Tim Winkler, director of Twig Marketing, says the numbers did not tell the whole story since universities tended to devolve their real marketing budgets to the faculties.
The size of the central marketing budget is often a point of jealousy and dissatisfaction [among academic staff], so many universities operate central marketing from devolved accounts, through strategic initiative funding and other sources which don’t form part of the centralised marketing pool.
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