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News Flash: Otago University no longer calls itself a "University", so it should take that word out of its name.

Lucky we did a screen shot. We previously called out Otago University for its misleading website aimed at recruiting staff and students, which has consistently repeated the claim that it is "world top 1% University". Here's the proof:


Whether it is before the most recent rankings, or based on them, Otago has never had that "top 1%" ranking, which would put it alongside Princeton, Cambridge, National University of Singapore, Melbourne, MIT and Harvard. Auckland announced this week, “Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland, now sits in the top 7.3% of universities in the world". Auckland's was 152 out of 2,000 ranked universities and Otago between 350 and 400. A "Ōtākou Whākaihu Waka" spokesperson said, “We're proud to remain the second-ranked university in NZ". Ooops. There's a humungous Comms / PR / marketing fail with that announcement. Auckland is top 7.3% in the world and Otago says its second in NZ - putting it at around top 20%. But Otago has long stated, as per the screen shot above, that it is top 1%. Probably due to nervousness over this Blog's writings, this is how Otago has responded, and its rather hilarious, if not pathetic. The University's recently updated website says this:


Note the word "universities" has been replaced by "higher education institutions". Higher education is a weasel word that includes everything, from the Oklahoma Home Baking Polytechnic, to the Hawaii Higher Education College of Surfing Moves. But let's be fair to those places, many of which are damn good. To my knowledge, there is no ranking of the world's "higher education institutions", since there are hundreds of thousands of them and its like comparing apples with oranges. Maybe the new University of Otago Vice Chancellor, Grant Robertson, can use part of his new $629,000 salary to take the time to clearly state to the NZ Mainstream Media why the word "universities" was changed, as per the above screen shots, on Otago's website, to now read "higher education institutions"? Does he no longer consider Otago to be a University? Then take it out of your official name.


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