Low score for NZ in student recruiting

By DITA DE BONI

A meeting of Asia-Pacific educators just concluded in Auckland has once again sounded a note of urgency about New Zealand tertiary intitutions' piecemeal approach to marketing themselves in Asia.

The Association of South-east Asian Institutions of Higher Learning (ASAIHL) conference held earlier this week at the Auckland Institute of Technology (AIT) was chaired by ASAIHL secretary-general Dr Ninnat Olanvoravuth of Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, who says New Zealand should actively market its "very good" education system as a product.

"New Zealand tertiary institutions tend to sit back and relax too much - they behave like British universities used to, thinking they were so great foreign students would flock to them," he says.

"When the US institutions started supplying scholarships in the 1960s, much of Asia turned to America over Britain to supply their English needs."

Dr Olanvoravuth says New Zealand is in a similar situation, losing a great deal of Asian student traffic to the more aggressive Australian universities.

He says he has been astounded at the low levels of funding many universities in New Zealand have put aside to promote themselves within Asia, compared with Australia's huge pool of funds to actively recruit through agency offices in Asian suburban centres.

Dr Olanvoravuth says because Malaysian universities can only take 40,000 students, up to 50,000 extra students are free to be wooed by international tertiary providers - a charge being led in Australia by private providers like Bond University on the Gold Coast.

Several institutions offer courses split between Malaysia and Australian universities, while others have established satellite campuses, following the lead of Melbourne-based Monash University.

Monash University Malaysia - established in February 1998 - was the first campus of a foreign university to be set up in Malaysia.

Dr Olanvoravuth and AIT's director of International Development Christopher Hawley, along with the other 149 member institutions belonging to ASAIHL, use the Australian model of education recruitment to develop New Zealand's educational export potential - learning from both the mistakes and the triumphs of Australia's all-out approach.

Mr Hawley says AIT has around 900 international students and aims to increase that number to 10 per cent of total student numbers - 2400.

International students boost New Zealand's foreign exchange earnings by close to $400 million a year, a figure the tertiary education sector wants to increase to $1 billion by 2005.

Mr Hawley says AIT will be helped in its aim when it becomes AUT - Auckland University of Technology - next year.

Business students, who make up the bulk of international students, look specifically for university degrees to take back to their home countries, Mr Hawley says. "We lose many of our students [to Auckland University] when they cross-credit their courses after two years."