The United
Kingdom admits people through its High Potential Individual visa if they have studied at a global Top 50 university.
Parents are more willing to immigrate and raise children where there is a globally competitive university. If a country lacks that, many families will remove it as a destination.
We have a massive economic opportunity: invest to make the University of Auckland a global winner in the Top 50 and use it as a magnet for students and families to bring talent, resources, and capital.
The multiplier effect of a good domestic university cannot be overstated, and our universities are standing at a dangerous tipping point.
One of the most powerful engines of the American economy is its world-class university system and its ability to attract top global talent.
South African-born Elon Musk studied at the University of Pennsylvania before launching Tesla and SpaceX.
Google/Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai left India for an MBA at Wharton, the business school of the University of Pennsylvania.
And Mumbai-born Vertex Pharmaceuticals CEO Resham Kewalramani earned her medical degree at Boston University.
Nvidia’s Jensen Huang went from Taiwan to Stanford Engineering.
Having top universities is a competitive advantage in drawing foreign talent in and creating jobs.
President Trump told the All-In podcast he favours giving green cards to all university graduates, saying he doesn’t want a situation where a student from India comes to MIT and then gets booted out of the country only to build a billion-dollar company back home.
And universities serve a much more strategic role than education alone.
They attract international talent during formative years and create allegiance to a country. Savvy students shop in the global university market and calculate the return on investment, quality of education, and visa/immigration prospects.
So how do we get into the global Top 50 and make our entire country dramatically more desirable for high-quality immigration?
Rankings are generally driven by publications, faculty quality, international reputation, class size ratio, endowment size, and other considerations like the yield rate.
Various rankings have the London School of Economics, Kyoto, Northwestern, the University of British Columbia, and Queensland University in 50th place.
In the 2025 QS World University Rankings, Auckland ranks 65th (up from 68 last year) and is our only university inside the top 100.
Its current endowment is around $300 million, compared with $475 million at Queensland and $560 million at the LSE. We are within striking distance and strike we must.
According to The Chronicle at North Carolina’s Duke University, more than 60% of American professors are liberal.
We have the ideal conditions to headhunt selected professors with research, credibility, and citations; offer them an exciting new post at Auckland and a brilliant life here; and pay them comparably, adjusted for our living costs.
We should give them the autonomy to build awesome programmes and eliminate infuriating bureaucracy.
Poaching should focus on specific niches that have high economic returns.
Those include aeronautical engineering to produce more Rocket Labs and agriscience to produce more Halters.
They also include food technology, applied AI and computer science, robotics, education and environmental science.
For instance, Wharton has out-competed almost all of America’s schools by offering a highly applied business education.
Let’s build the Wharton of computer science and offer a world-class AI and computer science degree that intensely focuses on practical, applied skills the industry needs.
We should headhunt talented high school graduates outside of New Zealand for a competitive scholarship programme and put our education leaders on the world stage, finding epic students.
And we should become much more assertive about alumni fundraising.
If we treat our university merely as another national utility that exists because it must, we will dwindle in the rankings. If we view ourselves as an agile, ambitious start-up on the world university education market, we can systemically build Auckland up and leave Queensland, Northeastern, and Kyoto in the dust.
Can we do it?
My rigorous training in mathematics and economics at the University of Auckland helped me compete at America’s top universities.
I am deeply optimistic that we can make Auckland a global Top 50 winner, but we need to commit the resources and harness intense focus from university leadership, our government, and the students, alumni, and industry partners compounded over many years to make this happen.