Today we had a reminder of the biggest danger from the government’s policy of making university free.

Our most prestigious university slipped in the global rankings again. Auckland University, my alma mater, fell in the QS rankings from 85^th to 88^th, when just three years ago it was sitting at 81^st.

 Staying in that top 100 is really important. That’s the golden place for universities – if you’re outside the top 100, you may as well be outside the top 500 as you just aren’t on the podium anymore.

You could excuse it if it was the only slippage, but Auckland Uni also fell, even further, in the Times Higher Education survey out at the end of last year.

This is exactly what universities were warning about when the government rolled out its free fees scheme. They warned our universities were seeing a slide down the global rankings, and what they needed was more money from the government to stop that so they could buy the best academics and resources available.

Because that is how the rankings are determined; not so much by students’ grades, but by the quality of the research the academics are producing, by how many times that’s getting cited around the world. If that is how the rankings are determined, that is where the money needs to go

There’s only so much money to go around. You either give it to the kids, or you give it to the unis.

Auckland’s 12 spots away from slipping out of the top 100, and if that happens, it could well affect the number of international students coming to Auckland.

Why would you go to Auckland if you could go to the Australian National University in Canberra, which  is 29^th, or the university of Melbourne at 38^th, or the university of Sydney at 42^nd? All of them, and more across the ditch, are in the top 100.

You know how much international students are worth to this country? $4.4 billion.

So actually, instead of the students, the government should’ve chosen the universities. Spending $200 million on the students is a waste of money for absolutely no gain in enrolment. Spending that $200 million on the universities instead - that would’ve been an investment.