Lessons from Hong Kong to Dubai

Britain's first e-University, to be launched next month, has announced its first set of courses. Nicholas Pyke reports

UKeU, the electronic college set up with government money, has unveiled its new range of courses ahead of its launch next month. The United Kingdom e-University will be offering an MSc in Bioinformatics jointly sponsored by Leeds and Manchester universities, the chief executive, John Beaumont, said last week. He is also planning to announce masters degrees in geographical information systems, travel and tourism management, a course in English "for academic purposes", a business foundation course and a teacher-training certificate aimed at the Chinese market.

UKeU is an attempt to cash in on the worldwide demand for British degree courses, one of our most successful exports. While the Open University (OU) dominates the home market for distance-learning packages, UKeU hopes to do the same abroad, using the names of established institutions such as Leeds or Manchester to sell the programmes. Latin America and China are the initial target areas. The idea is that individual universities sign up with UKeU which, with £62m of public funding and £5.6m cash from Sun Microsystems, will approve and market their courses.

It has already started offering a masters degree in Public Policy Management from York University (an established course adapted for sale abroad); an MSC in information technology and management from Sheffield Hallam University; and a course run jointly by Cambridge and the OU in e-learning and the new economy, which will count as one-third of a masters degree.

Bioinformatics, the latest addition, centres on the increasingly computerised world of biological analysis and healthcare. It is aimed at computer graduates moving into biology, and vice versa. The subject covers a huge area, including technological analysis of gene sequences, proteins, fingerprints and biological databases.

The planned course in geographical information systems will also embrace computer analysis. The discipline, which includes computer-mapping and satellite positioning, is involved in a growing range of activities from environmental protection to retailing. English for academic purposes is likely to be a part-degree for foreign students intent on a teaching career.

The University of Ulster has also joined UKeU. Along with the University of Leicester and the Royal College of Nursing, it has formed a group, the UK Healthcare Education Partnership, to develop courses, including a certificate in nursing. Ulster has brought some of its existing online programmes to the scheme, including postgrad diplomas/MScs in biomedical sciences, environmental toxicology and pollution management, coastal zone management, energy management and renewable energy.

The Northern Irish university is already a significant provider of online learning, so its involvement is a major plus for UKeU, which some believe may struggle to interest enough higher education institutions to make it viable. UKeU has to compete with the University of London, for example, which is determined to sell its own courses independently and will start doing so in September. It already has 30,000 students worldwide. The OU, meanwhile, is moving towards e-learning, as opposed to the videos and textbooks associated with traditional distance-learning courses. E-learning is becoming the norm for the big-selling, profitable MBA courses that British universities offer here and abroad. The market leader so far is Phoenix, whose range of worldwide courses has helped it to become the largest private university in America.

Mr Beaumont says there is no shortage of universities wanting to take part in UKeU or its courses. The key point will be picking the ones that prove commercially viable. "If we don't do that, the initiative will fail. There is no shortage of courses for us to sift through. It is the quality that counts."

UkeU has spent £20m on a technological "platform" for its courses, and needs to recoupthis investment. Initially it has decided to concentrate on general areas of business and management; science and technology; English language; teacher training; the environment; law; and healthcare. It has opened offices in Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong, Dubai and Sao Paulo.