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This paper proposes ways in which the findings of a research study, conducted with a group of foundation degree students in a West Wales further education college, could be incorporated into recruitment strategies within the college. The findings may also inform recruitment planning in other higher education settings. The paper is taken from a wider project that aimed to gain detailed insight into the experiences of the foundation degree students. The focus is restricted to issues judged to relate directly to recruitment planning. Recent education policy both in Wales and across the UK has aimed to widen participation in higher education from under‐represented groups. There has been a significant rise in the number of students electing to undertake a foundation degree in Wales. It is anticipated that this trend will be further encouraged following the announcement of a multi‐million pound pan‐Wales foundation degree scheme. This will be led by the University of Glamorgan with particular emphasis on wider partnership with the further education sector. The study employs a qualitative methodology. Interviews provide the main focus of data collection, with broad areas for discussion identified from responses to a short questionnaire. An approach based on grounded theory is used to analyse and interpret the findings, supported by the NVivo software package. The findings suggest that highlighting the flexibility of course provision is extremely important. There is also a need for a flexible institutional approach that recognises that many students will not be aware of established higher education admission procedures and will need to be supported through the process.

THE commercial world, as a rule, is not the most enthusiastic supporter of Public Libraries, the attitude of the average English business man towards them being one of tolerant contempt, based largely upon the conviction that there is no money in them. He is also misled as to their value for business purposes by the occasional outbursts of irresponsible journalists, who go daft on the fiction question, with no more authority behind their statements than the figures of a single lending department plus the Fleet Street imagination and the professional desire to turn out a sensational paragraph which will go the round of the newspapers. Largely for these reasons, and partly because no great endeavour is made to educate the business man in the commercial value of a good library, he is permitted to become indifferent to the value of institutions whose methods he adopts for his own business purposes without being aware of the fact. Yet, it is true, that practically all modern business methods of accounts, card indexing, vertical filing and general adjustability of office systems are derived from the actual practice of Public Libraries. This was shown most strikingly at the Business exhibitions held at Olympia, in London, and just recently at the “Premier Congrès International du Bureau Moderne,” held at Paris from June 23rd to 30th. At all these exhibitions librarians beheld their own methods of cataloguing, indexing and filing being exploited by stationers, furniture dealers and library furnishers as their own original inventions. Not a word as to the librarian pioneers who had made all this adjustability and expansion possible by their experiments and patient search after scientific flexibility of method. However, it is part of the nature of things that the ideas of the mere hermit‐librarian should be exploited by the shrewd man of business, and librarians should rejoice that, at last, an universal service has been rendered to the world of commerce, which, though not generally recognized, must be accepted as a benefit which a body of mere officials have unconsciously created for their commercial brethren.

IN the October number of THE BRITISH FOOD JOURNAL, while disclaiming any intention of supporting or opposing any political party or any section of politicians, we stated our opinion that the fiscal policy which has been outlined before the country by Mr. CHAMBERLAIN is eminently one which requires to be put to the test of experiment and which cannot be profitably argued about upon theoretical bases. In connection with the allegation that by following the policy of leaving our doors open to those who shut their own doors in our faces, we are able to obtain goods at less expense than would be the case under other conditions, we pointed out that it would be well for the public to consider whether that which is so cheap may not also, to a great extent, be particularly nasty. The desirability of considering the nature and quality of so‐called “ cheap ” foods, supplied to us by various countriies without restriction, does not, as yet, appear to have entered the heads of those who have made matter for political controversy out of what is, in reality, a scientific question. The facts are not sufficiently known, or, in consequence of the proverbial carelessness of our generation, are not clearly appreciated. And yet, as it seems to us, some of those facts are of paramount importance to those who desire to study the subject in a calm and scientific manner and outside the region of political turmoil. What do we get from the various countries whose producers and merchants are free to “dump” their goods in this country without the restrictive influence of duty payments? Great Britain has made it known to all the world that “Rubbish may be Shot Here,” and we venture to say that the fullest advantage has been taken, and is taken, of the permission. From America, France, Germany, Italy, Holland, and Belgium, in fact from every producing country—including now even Russia and Siberia, we get inferior or scientifically‐adulterated articles which are sold to the public “ cheap.” Milk and butter scientifically adulterated, or produced under improper conditions in such a way that their composition becomes the same as physically‐adulterated products, condensed “milk” minus cream, cheese practically devoid of fat, or “ filled ” (as it is called) with margarine, all reach us in enormous quantities from most of our near and dear neighbours. Butter and certain wines and beers, loaded with injurious ‘ preservative” chemicals and the sale of which is prohibited in the country of production, are sent to the easily‐entered British “dumping‐ground” for the delectation of its confiding inhabitants. “Tinned” foods prepared from raw materials of inferior character or of more than questionable origin, are copiously unloaded on our shores to feed our complaisant population,—instead of being consigned to the refuse destructors which should be their proper destination; while, every now and then, when something worse than usual has been supplied, representative specimens of this delectable class of preparation are proved to have caused outbreaks of violent illness—those so‐called ptomaine poisonings which, of late years, have increased in number and in virulence to so distinctly alarming an extent. Flour made from diseased or damaged grain, or itself “ sick ” or damaged, and so “ processed ” as to mask its real condition; flour, again, adulterated with other and inferior meals, are “ goods ” supplied to us in ample amount for the benefit of those whose mainstay is some form of bread or flour‐food. The list might be continued literally ad nauseam.