The marketing industry is famed for its dozens of annual award ceremonies, which many marketers see as brilliant networking opportunities to help score better jobs, while just as many see it as an opportunity to get drunk for free. Monash University seems to be readying their students for both counts, with their annual marketing awards night for students of the Masters program.

The Annual Marketing Awards for Excellence have been running for over two decades, and have become a major recruitment drive for Australian marketing departments. The 2010 grand Graduate Course Award winner Katrin Illig scored a job at Renault this year, and Draft FCB offered a year long scholarship to Khia Croy, which includes a placement overseas. 

You can understand why the award winners are coveted, Monash just might have the biggest marketing department of any university globally.

“Monash is the strongest marketing department in Australia, possibly in the world,” Monash direct marketing lecturer Frank Chamberlin tells Marketing magazine. “No one else is saying they’re bigger.”

It sounds like the words of a confident university. At the very least, Monash could whip out the old “biggest in the southern hemisphere” line. Tonga surely can’t compete for marketing faculties.

“It’s great for the industry because they see the sort of people available for the market place,” Chamberlin adds. “Most of the students have already done work in marketing, then they come and do their Masters. So this is very much about recruitment, everyone gets something out of it.”

Do you know any great marketing faculties at Australian universities? Are they running marketing awards for the same reason as Monash? Tell us about it, connect with Marketing mag on twitter via @marketingmag