AUT Adschool CD Paul White has added his views to the those expressed by his MDS counterpart Kate Humphries yesterday (scroll down to see that story) on the arrival of the celebrated Miami Ad School in this part of the world (Sydney, to be precise):

“Miami Ad School has a fantastic reputation worldwide and it doesn’t surprise me they are venturing down here.

“But will they stay? They opened in London a few years ago, taking some space at Saatchis in Charlotte Street, I think. I’m pretty sure they are not there now.

“But they are all over a cash-strapped US and Europe so no wonder they’re launching with a special offer: ‘After one year at the Sydney school you have the opportunity to study a quarter or two in any of our other base schools. Get a global perspective on social media in Hamburg, develop gaming concepts for the Miami mob, learn scriptwriting for a New York radio station in Brooklyn or shoot Spanish street life for a video clip in Madrid,’ says their website.

“Oh I see, they can’t get enough students up North, so they’re going to feed them in from down South. And you thought it was all about great ads.

“Having said all of which, them being in Oz isn’t going to make a lot of difference to AUT. We’ll still be the only university in NZ that takes ad creativity seriously, gets closely involved with agencies and clients and is richly rewarded for it. Mostly in the form of all those AUT graduates who now work for great agencies here, as well as in London, Sydney, Melbourne, New York, Geneva and Amsterdam.

“We’re used to competing with Miami Ad School and not doing too badly against them either – at the D&AD Global Student Awards, for example (we’ve taking out a couple of silvers a quite a few mentions over the last few years).

“On the fees front, I am staggered that anyone can find $40,000+ for a two year course. You can get a degree with us for the cost of one quarter with them. But we’re not about to start putting starbursts in our ads.”