Online learning scheme struggles to pass the test

An online learning scheme backed by £62m of taxpayers' money has launched only a handful of online university courses, and has already committed nearly half of its funding, a Computing investigation reveals.

The government-backed UKeU was announced by Education Secretary David Blunkett in February 2000 promising to give students across the world the chance to earn degrees online.

The project was offered to every UK higher education institution and was intended to take its first students in 2002.

But only two courses are live and just 15 of the UK's 100-plus higher education institutions (HEIs) have signed a contract to produce a course for UKeU.

The company, based close to Buckingham Palace, is eating through its budget fast.

It is still working on its platform and will need to spend £20m this financial year on infrastructure development. Another £8m is committed to the development of more university courses.

And it says a further £10m a year will need to be spent for the foreseeable future to develop additional online learning programmes with UK universities.

Chief executive John Beaumont says he is happy with the current scale of development but admitted that many universities have been slow to take up the project.

'Not all universities are major distance education players. They're often very much restricted to their campus - and that's not a good thing or a bad thing - it's just where there business strategy and its implementation is,' he said.

He believes about 40 universities will have produced one course within five years although he refused to divulge how many students were currently signed up because of 'commercial confidentiality.'

He says UKeU will try to raise additional private sector funding so that the company can provide more courses.

Jake Reynolds, assistant director at the University of Cambridge Programme for Industry, said he was hopeful UKeU would be a success but added: 'I have my doubts because I think the market for online learning is a bit untested and it's not as large as people originally envisaged in the dot com days.'

UKeU is banking on the support of well over 100,000 students by 2010.

But analysts say the market is still far from certain. While a third of students use elearning to supplement classroom-based learning, just seven per cent complete full remote online courses, according to Gartner.

'The marketplace for elearning is not for new students that are not already involved in education, it's with current students,' said Michael Zastrocky, vice president and research director for education at Gartner.