UKeU wanted another £15m

The government's failed £62m flagship elearning scheme, UkeU, responded to a critical report on its progress by asking for a further £15m, according to documents leaked to Computing.

The scheme was meant to attract overseas students to study online with UK universities.

But a series of Computing reports into the project have highlighted serious flaws and revealed that UKeU has attracted just 900 students, at a cost of £44,000 each. Its target was to sign up 5,600 students in the first year.

The call for yet more funding followed a highly-critical confidential report from PA Consulting which drew a number of conclusions, including:

• The UkeU project lacked focus in planning and management
• The bespoke infrastructure had no clear competitive advantage
• No provision had been made for private sector funding

'In short, where and how will the UkeU make money?' ask the report's authors.

In response, UKeU stated that the earliest time at which private money could be injected is autumn 2006.

It concluded it would 'therefore be 'prudent' to ask the Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce) for an additional £15m.

But after receiving the PA review, Hefce decided that the best use of public funding would be to restructure the organisation - a plan made public in March 2004.

'It is important to re-structure the company in an orderly manner in order to make best use of the knowledge and assets,' said a Hefce spokeman.

Jill Hewitt, commercial manager for the department of computer science at the University of Hertfordshire, says her institution is making contingency plans to move its UKeU students to its own bespoke elearning platform.

'We're very lucky because we've got the platform and I feel very sorry for some of the other institutions that don't have a similar infrastructure,' she said.

According to Hefce, UKeU made the decision to use a bespoke platform.

'This was to provide a platform that was modular, scalable, and could provide facilities such as online applications, enrolment and billing, that was not available in an off-the shelf product,' said a Hefce spokesman.