The great e-University challenge

At the start of 2000, David Blunkett announced that the age of the e-University was dawning. In two months' time the first courses hit cyberspace. Lucy Hodges asks, will they sign up in Sao Paulo?

Whatever happened to the e-University announced in a blaze of publicity by David Blunkett, the former Education Secretary, at the dawn of the new millennium? Have British universities rushed to join the action? Are new courses being zapped into cyberspace to tap the anticipated huge global market for online education?

The answer is that it is happening according to plan. Some universities have joined in; others have steered clear, hoping to do better themselves. The first three Masters start in February and March 2003, beamed at the overseas market. There will be no glitzy launch. As far as John Beaumont, the chief executive, is concerned, the thing is up and running.

Offices have opened in Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong, Dubai and São Paulo. More will follow for students in the United Kingdom and abroad, in subjects such as business and management, science and technology, health, environmental studies and law.

The UKeU (short for UK e-Universities) has arrived, avoiding the razzmatazz that heralded its conception, as befits an enterprise that suffered from the bursting of the dot.com bubble. The British taxpayer has forked out £62m, and, so far, only £5.6m has come from its principal private partner, Sun Microsystems, far less than the matching funds envisaged.

But John Beaumont is upbeat: "We have enough money to make the venture successful," he says.

The critics are sceptical. Developing good-quality distance learning is incredibly expensive, as the Open University knows. Professor Mike Thorne, vice-chancellor of the University of East London, reckons that it costs £50m to set up just one degree online. Other experts say that it costs a fraction of that, say, £3m per degree. Either way, it's a lot of money. That is because you can't simply tip lectures or textbooks into the ether. You have to rework the material to make it palatable to, say, the office worker in Hong Kong. You need online tutorial support, and assignments and feedback for students.

"To do it properly, you are talking about very serious money indeed," says Professor Thorne. "And it takes time before you see results. It's like the Channel Tunnel, which needed an unbelievably massive investment. No one would have started doing that with a shovel and a hole three inches in diameter, which is what we're trying to do with the e-U. This project is underinvested."

It is also extraordinarily risky. No one knows whether people will want to study online in large numbers. Moreover, will they sign up for UKeU degrees when there are plenty of other competing qualifications?

Phoenix, the for-profit university in America, may not have the cachet of many UK universities, but it gives customers what they want – vocational qualifications delivered flexibly by face-to-face teaching and e-learning. The e-learning courses are now the fastest-growing programme, and Phoenix is now the largest private university in the United States. Its former president has been made head of Apollo International, Phoenix's parent group, which is, like the UKeU, busily trying to muscle in on the Brazilian market.

So, the UKeU will have some formidable foreign rivals in the private sector. In addition, it faces competition from cyber-universities established by other nations. Finland has a networked system for its universities; Pakistan is planning a virtual university for IT training; Malaysia is developing its university system as a regional hub; Greece is following the OU model; and France is setting up a subject-based e-learning network.

"Ours is the only national e-university that is 100 per cent commercial," says Professor Robin Middlehurst of Surrey University, who wrote the report that led to the UKeU. "That makes it difficult to make a lot of money, unless you have huge volume."

Certainly, John Beaumont has high hopes of Brazil, where there is enormous demand for higher education, and high internet usage. But Brazil is a new market for British universities, and the material will need to be translated into Portuguese, which means forging partnerships with local universities. All that is in the pipeline.

In addition, the UKeU will be competing with London University, as well as with other British universities. London University's external programme had originally been expected to take part, but decided to go it alone. That is a shame, say some experts, because it is so highly regarded, with 30,000 students globally, and real know-how.

Instead, London's external programme is developing its own virtual courses to be launched in September 2003. There will be Masters degrees in information security systems, and in distance learning, and an undergraduate degree in business administration. John McConnell, head of the external programme, says: "I'm not sure to what degree other places have done market research, and asked customers what they want. They don't want materials delivered down the web. They want discussion groups, access to learning materials via the university library, and a bulletin board so that they can see their records. That's what our students want, and that's what we're giving them."

Whether the UKeU will be able to differentiate itself enough in an already crowded market-place is debatable, according to Philip Treleaven, professor of computer science at University College London. But John Beaumont believes that it will. Although its courses are being offered entirely online, the e-University is recruiting local people abroad to support students in their studies on the OU model, though these helpers will be mentors rather than academics. It is also marketing itself to companies, offering, for example, to train their staff in IT.

So, how many students will the e-University need on its first three Masters courses to break even? John Beaumont won't say. "The business plan is secret," he says. "It's commercially confidential. This is not a quick win. You're not going to break-even on a course much before year four or five. These have to be quality products."

Despite a pervasive scepticism, some university leaders are optimistic that the hopes for the e-University will be realised. One is Professor Aldwyn Cooper, pro vice- chancellor of Glamorgan University, which is launching five virtual degrees via the UKeU in 2003. "This is providing a marvellous opportunity for universities to deliver programmes to parts of the world that they could not reach otherwise," he says. "We will have something that is bigger than the average-sized university online in about 18 months."

Stephen Hill, principal of Royal Holloway, calls it a bold initiative. "It deserves to succeed and could make a real difference to learning opportunities around the world," he says. Professor Tim O'Shea, principal of Edinburgh University, and a member of the steering committee that set up the e-University, also remains cheerful. "It could be a great success," he says. "If it is, it will be capitalising on the strengths of UK universities. If not, those already in the field will keep going anyway."

THREE MASTERS COURSES FOR GLOBAL MINDS

*Masters in public policy management from York University is an already established course which has been adapted for the global market. Cost: £9,250

*MSc in information technology and management from Sheffield Hallam University is also an already established distance learning course. Cost: £8,000

*A course in e-learning from the Open University and Cambridge which comprises the first one-third of a Masters degree. Called a postgraduate certificate in learning in the connected economy, it is a brand new course. Expected students are educationalists and human resources managers in big organisations. Cost: £2,600

l.hodges@independent.co.uk