VCE hopefuls dining out on sustainable cutlery
Thousands of VCE students have received an unusual gift from Monash University in the post – but some over excited mums and dads have mistaken the marketing gimmick as an offer from the top university.
Education
Don't miss out on the headlines from Education. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Monash University is wooing potential students by sending out tens of thousands of free bamboo cutlery sets as a carrot for them to enrol in the university.
The sets, which include a fork, spoon, chopsticks and reusable straw with cleaner in a branded pouch, are the talk of VCE graduates.
But they also caused some anxious moments as parents texted their children, some of them at Schoolies, telling them of the arrival of Monash mail and asking if they wanted it opened in anticipation it was a uni offer.
The VCE results and ATARservice operates from Thursday December 12 from 7am until 5pm Monday December 16 via website and mobile app.
Monash Uni is running a Change of Preference Expo at its Caulfield campus next Friday. Other institutions have similar events planned but the freebies don’t appear so lavish. Course offers will start from December 18.
Monash declined to say how much the gimmick was costing but with more than 80,000 VCE students this year, a large number of them are tipped to have had Monash campuses among their 1 to 8 preferences.
The bamboo cutlery sets, which don’t include a knife, appear to retail for between $10 and $16 are also to engage prospective students with the uni’s environmental sustainability commitment.
Monash accompanied the cutlery sets with a spiel with the hashtag #monashgivesafork
It invited them to with the line “here’s your fork in the road – take the sustainable path.”
Some interstate students also have received the cutlery.
The hotly sought after cutlery has seen one jokingly selling them as “state of the art cutlery set” for $1900.
“Wow thanks Monash, finally got my free cutlery set. Jokes on them, they were my 6th pref. Fam went crazy thinking I got accepted or something,” one noted online.
Some were confused about what they thought was a third chopstick that turned out to be a reusable straw with a cleaner.
THE CAREER WOMEN ARE NOW GRAVITATING TO
BEST AND WORST UNI SUBJECT AREAS FOR GETTING A JOB
“Reusable cutlery is being sent to all year 12 students who put Monash University down as a preference, to congratulate them on completing their final year of high school and welcome them to the beginning of a new journey,” Monash said.
“Monash is committed to making the world a better place through our groundbreaking research and thinking, and we know small actions can make a big difference too. Students are encouraged to join us on our journey towards a more sustainable future through using reusable cutlery instead of single-use plastics.“