DCU spent €112 attracting you… if you came in this year through the CAO that is

DCU spent more than €112 attracting each student who entered into the university through the CAO this academic year according to figures exclusively obtained by the College View.

The figures show that the university spent €200,280 on last year’s CAO campaign, which saw 1,776 students enter into DCU through the CAO.

According to DCU president Ferdinand von Prondzynski, given that DCU’s finances are based on the prediction that places will be filled, if the university didn’t spend the money “we might have far fewer students and a significant financial crisis.”
He says: “We feel we are very prudent with our expenditure, as some other universities spend very much more than we do.”

However, in direct contrast to the amount spent by DCU on attracting sixth year students deciding where to go to college, University College Cork (UCC) spent only €850 on the university’s CAO campaign last academic year.

Lynn Bannon, the UCC deputy admissions officer, told the College View that the university has a “whole different approach to recruitment.”

According to von Prondzynski, given that “each student brings in a significant amount of money per year in fees and in core grant, upwards of €5,000 per student, or over €20,000 for the duration of their time in DCU overall, spending €112… is not a bad return on investment.”

He says: “There may be an argument for no university putting any money into marketing for domestic students, but that would have to be a system-wide approach, and even then you do want to make students aware of your existence.”

The amount that DCU spends on each student it attracts through the CAO is set to decrease next year however, after only €150,000 was spent on this year’s campaign – the result of a decrease to the university’s marketing budget as a whole.

It is also expected that more students than ever are set to enter into the university next year as the amount of students enrolling at DCU is set to break 11,000 for the first time.

The figures obtained by the College View show that the marketing budget decreased almost a quarter between last and this academic year, down from €309,561 to €247,650 this year.

According to John Murphy, the Students’ Union education and welfare officer marketing is very important for DCU.

“Higher education in Ireland is a very competitive industry and DCU has to compete with much older institutions such as TCD and UCD,” he says. “Any money they spend in helping to recruit students to DCU is an investment for them and it benefits everyone, including students that are already here.”

However, he feels that “given the cuts that are being made to higher education across the board, they could possibly look at more creative and cheaper ways to market DCU such as Facebook, which is a very cheap and powerful method of reaching out to people.”

The figures obtained by the College View also show that €64,730 was spent on last year’s open day campaign, with DCU student recruitment officer Stephen Spierin telling the College View earlier this year that costs for the open day have been reduced “by 50% since 2005.”

According to von Prondzynski the open days are vital beyond just marketing.

He says: “it is wholly appropriate to let students see the facilities and get a sense of what each university or college is like.”