News 25 Feb – Ag ITO Keeps Numbers Up and VC Infallibility

February 25th 2010 at 8:33am, By Dave Guerin

  1. Enrolments The Agriculture ITO managed to keep trainee  numbers up during last year’s recession, with only a small dip – impressive given tight employment conditions. UCOL has had 500 (19%) more enrolment applications  to date this year than last, with rejected students facing a long wait.
  2. Orientation Review of SIT Orientation and regular annual Police checkpoint for old cars outside Bay of Plenty Poly (plus student reaction), while Christchurch City Council is simulating car crashes at CPIT and Canterbury Uni, including fake blood (I kid you not).
  3. US News Community colleges in the US (like our ITPs) have decided to band together to combat the national marketing campaigns of large for-profit institutions for online learning. The for-profits pay for online lead generation (amongst other strategies) and I remember going to a US conference in 2004 talking about just that issue, so community colleges aren’t being quick about this! The listed Apollo Group spent US$275m on marketing in the Sep-Nov 2009 period for its University of Phoenix and other subsidiaries, so we are talking about big numbers. There are some interesting, if partisan, comments at the link for people wanting to learn more.
  4. Export Education Tim Shadbolt explains SIT’s international student marketing strategy.
  5. Research Wayne Mapp, Minister of Research Science and Technology, referred to “looking carefully at PBRF” in a speech last week- no other details.
  6. Odd quote of the day is from Julia Gillard, Australian Education Minister: “The Government today has condemned Opposition Education spokesperson Christopher Pyne for saying he knows better than Vice-Chancellors about students’ needs…” Putting aside the context, I’m not sure I’d condemn someone for saying they know better than Vice-Chancellors about anything and I sure wouldn’t start my media release with it.

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