Aussie universities criticized for spending hundreds of mill

CANBERRA, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- Australia's biggest universities have been accused of "pleading hardship" in the face of proposed government changes to the tertiary sector, despite having spent 304 million Australian dollars (245 million U.S. dollars) on advertising and marketing in 2016.

University spending on advertising and marketing leaped 30 million Australian dollars (24.2 million U.S. dollars) from 2015 to 2016, while overall spending since 2009 totaled a whopping 1.7 billion Australian dollars (1.37 billion U.S. dollars).

Some of the money has been used in vocal opposition to proposed money-saving changes to the university sector by the federal government. As part of its reforms, the government wants to enact a 2.5 percent "efficiency dividend", an annual reduction in funding for the running costs of an organization, on universities to help the government out of its budget "black hole".

On Saturday, government Senator James Patterson said he was "pretty sceptical" of universities "spending big on marketing to attract students" while complaining about efficiency dividends, while crossbench Liberal Democrat Senator David Leyonhjelm said it was hard to take the universities' claims of "hardship" seriously considering the money being spent on advertising and executive salaries.

"(The universities) are pleading hardship and yet they pay their vice-­chancellors and senior managers massive salaries, while all the government is proposing is to reduce from 58 to 54 percent its subsidy of student courses," Leyonhjelm told News Corp on Saturday.

"Students will continue to pay nothing upfront. And yet ... the (universities) are arguing the sky is going to fall. When the vice-chancellors and senior managers reduce their own inflated salaries, I'll start taking their claims of hardship a bit more seriously."

The average wage of a vice-chancellor at Australia's 38 public universities was 890,000 Australian dollars (717,000 U.S. dollars), while 11 earned more than 1 million Australian dollars (805,000 U.S. dollars) in 2016.

Universities which spent the most on advertising and marketing in 2016 included Melbourne's Deakin University (20.3 million Australian dollars or 16.4 million U.S. dollars) and Sydney's Macquarie University (11.3 million Australian dollars or 9.1 million U.S. dollars)

The universities have said the cuts to higher education, such as the efficiency dividend, would weaken Australia's education export market and would damage the sector's reputation as one of the best in the world.