Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment Minister Goldsmith has today announced a new $10,000 scholarship for a current or prospective international student.

“International education is now our fourth largest export industry, worth $4.5 billion a year, and this scholarship is a one-off award to celebrate another significant milestone for Education New Zealand – reaching one million followers across its social media platforms,” Mr Goldsmith says.

“Social media plays a key part in Education New Zealand’s marketing activities, enabling us to attract talented young people from around the globe.

“This total represents an impressive 20 per cent of the potential audience of 5 million globally mobile students worldwide. It also reflects strong social media engagement scores (average 8 per cent) and outranks the social media benchmarks achieved by other countries including USA, UK, Canada and Australia.

“The scholarship, which equates to one million cents, is a way of saying thank you to those one million social media followers by assisting a high quality student to study in New Zealand,” Mr Goldsmith says.

Education New Zealand’s social media community includes Study in New Zealand Facebook, Twitter, Weibo, WeChat, Instagram and Snapchat.

Applications for the scholarship are open until 20 July 2017, and the winner will be announced on 1 August 2017. More information will be available on the Study in New Zealand Facebook page here.

The scholarship is funded from within Education New Zealand’s existing operating budget.