With $20 million forked out by Western Sydney University between 2015 and 2017 on its marketing; and the University of New South Wales, RMIT, and the University of Queensland all spending between $12.5 to $15 million in 2013 on their marketing– excluding staffing costs and overheads – the half a million spent by Federation University seems a paltry amount.

Yet FedUni’s budget delivered enrolments of 8 per cent above target across the entire university. The university’s Gippsland campus exceeded target enrolments by 26 per cent.

This also comes after a study, published last year in the Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management by the Australian Catholic University’s Chrissa Favaloro, which showed that bigger marketing budgets don’t correlate to higher enrolments.