VC's View ... The staging of the University's Open Day on 13 September serves as a reminder that recruiting for 1998 is on in earnest. This year's Open Day was a first, with Canberra's five major tertiary institutions combining to hold their Open Days on the same date and jointly promoting the event. There are strong initial indications that this was successful, with the ANU organisers reporting a marked increase in attendance by prospective interstate students. If students chose their university solely on the basis of educational quality, the ANU could afford to take a largely hands-off view of student recruitment and marketing. However, students are no more likely to be that purely rational in their choice than consumers of any other product. Australian students have long been reluctant to move away from home to attend university. The cost of study is likely to be uppermost in a decision of whether to remain at home or to venture further afield. If students do move, it may be expected that their choice of study destination will be influenced by specific course availability, university prestige and reputation, and lifestyle factors. Beginning 1998, the cost of studying at the ANU will be relieved appreciably for a number of students through ANU Endowment Accommodation Bursaries. The bursaries, which are funded from the student General Services Fee, will provide - on a means-tested basis - about half of the tariff for students in a self-catered University hall or college. They are one example of a number of new scholarships which will make it easier for students to come from interstate and overseas to study at the ANU. It is pleasing that the ACT Government is showing signs of preparedness to get strongly behind generic marketing of Canberra as a desirable destination for study at secondary and tertiary levels. We will always have to work hard to compete with the high profile of Sydney and Melbourne - and the attractions of the sun and surf locations. However, we should be making more of Canberra's status as the national capital, our clean and safe environment, and our proximity to Sydney, beaches and snowfields. A number of state governments have been far more active in promoting their attractions than we have in the ACT. It has paid dividends for their universities. We have laid the groundwork for action in 1998. If it does not happen, we will have missed a most important opportunity for the ANU and Canberra. Many things are being done across the campus to make study at the ANU an even more attractive proposition than it has been in the past. The task of effectively promoting these will fall largely on the shoulders of the University's newly appointed director of student recruitment, Mr Tim Beckett. The director, who takes up duties in early November, will have responsibility for recruitment, including marketing, at international, national and local levels. He will be cooperating with all relevant areas of the University in much more of a partnership model of recruitment activity than has been the case in the past. Next year will be a challenging one. We need more international students and we need to more than meet our EFTSU targets for Australian students if we are to maintain our operating grant. However, 1999, the first year of a post-West Review sector, may well be a whole new ball game. Not least on the list of possibilities is that a sizeable chunk of the current operating grant will go instead to vouchers which student holders can take to the university of their choice. That scenario is one which inevitably tilts the playing field towards the major capital city universities. If it turns out to be the case, the competition for students will become even more fierce. Deane Terrell