UKeU puts elearning platform up for sale

The business and assets of UKeU, the government's flagship online learning scheme, have been put up for sale.

The potential sale of the organisation, including its multi-million pound learning platform, signals another nail in the coffin for the project following a 12-month investigation into the troubled scheme by Computing.

UKeU was set up in February 2000 to give overseas students the chance to earn degrees online. £62m of government money was allocated to Hefce (the Higher Education Funding Council for England) for the project.

Hefce provided £32.6m to support the creation of an elearning infrastructure and £7m to set up various elearning programmes in higher education institutions.

But the scheme failed to meet its first-year target of 5,600 students, attracting just 900 students at a cost of £44,000 each (Computing, March 4).

An advertisement in last week's Computing said UKeU's board was 'willing to consider expressions of interest in all or any part of the Company's business and assets'.

A spokesman for Hefce said the sale of UKeU was part of the continuing restructuring of the organisation.

UKeU has already slimmed down its operating staff. And two initiatives that were part of UKeU's remit, eChina and the eLearning Research Centre, could be managed by higher education institutions.

Hefce says it is possible that a buyer may wish to continue running UKeU.

'What's important is that UKeU's board find someone to successfully buy and carry on running the business. It may be called something else, but the main part of the business will continue,' said a Hefce spokesman.

However, Hefce accepts that there is a strong possibility that any potential bidder may wish to run the learning platform in a sector outside higher education.

Anne-Lucie Norton, director of King's College London's elearning programme and responsible for the college's war studies courses on UKeU, said the sale could be beneficial.

'It might be a good thing, as long as it's made available to higher education institutions, as it was meant to be,' said Norton.

'It's frustrating because we want to launch our courses, but elearning is a path that we want to follow. We want to do our e-programme and we might have to make contingency arrangements.'