Anglia Ruskin University’s publicity budget has increased by 250% in the past five years, Varsity can reveal.

The former polytechnic spent £1.4 million on PR and advertising in 2006-7, up from just £400,000 in 2002-3. In the meantime, the Cambridge-based university has laid off over ten per cent of its academic staff and closed its Geography department.

Dr Trevor Emmett, chair of the ARU lecturers’ union, told Varsity: “Every pound we spend on advertising is a pound not spent on something else. Some of that money could definitely be better spent.”

Dr Emmett also blasted the university’s widely ridiculed series of publicity campaigns, saying “They’re half-arsed slogans that offend the students at ARU and in Cambridge. It’s fair to say that some of them are counterproductive.

“The ‘Not just an Old University in Cambridge’ ad is bound to annoy people at Cambridge University, and the ‘JanARUy campaign’ was just a stupid misspelling,” he added.

Varsity has learnt that Anglia Ruskin spent £35,367 to develop the former campaign, and spent £38,897 on the latter. The advert ‘Welcome to Cambridge, Home of Anglia Ruskin University’ – visible in the town’s railway station – was produced at a cost of £56,823, according to figures released under the Freedom of Information Act.

It is understood that the adverts were produced by external agencies. The University also spent £37,546 on the slogan ‘CleaRING’, although it “still doesn’t take many students through Clearing,” according to Dr Emmett. “Clearing used to be a big thing in this uni, and it still is for some departments, but it isn’t for most of us,” he revealed.

Emmett, who was a member of the ARU Geology department before it was closed in 2000, also went on to say that “in 2007 the University made eighty of its 600 lecturing staff redundant through a voluntary severance package. It was made very clear that certain portions of academic activity were under threat, especially as the Geography department closed and our French and German provision is also gone.” Anglia Ruskin’s Geography department shut its doors at the end of the 2005-6 academic year.

But despite his misgivings about the controversial slogans, Dr Emmett said that the University had “probably underspent on advertising in the past,” and said that it was “absolutely necessary” that the institution raised its profile in Cambridge and elsewhere.

A spokeswoman for Anglia Ruskin University told Varsity: “Geography was closed in 2006 following a significant decline in student numbers. This decline mirrored changes in the demand for different subjects taking place nationally within the HE sector.

“Our University-wide Voluntary Severance Scheme (VSS) in 2007 had two main drivers: financial and strategic. In financial terms, the scheme was successful in achieving the required reduction of around eighty academic staff.

“From a strategic point of view, it is vital that the University continually reviews its courses and the balance of its teaching provision in order to ensure that the course portfolio offered remains fully relevant.”

Jonathan Laurence