UKeU structures 'inappropriate'

Government issues response to report on failure of elearning initiative

The £50m elearning initiative UKeU failed because of inappropriate systems and structures, according to an official report.

The government this week published its response to an earlier Education and Skills Committee report into the collapse of UKeU, and has acknowledged that the outcome of the project was highly disappointing.

UKeU was launched in 2000 to attract overseas students to study online at UK universities.

But the first courses were delayed until September 2003, and the project attracted just 900 students – falling well short of the target of 5,600.

UKeU also failed to attract significant private investment, despite this being a condition of government funding.

‘At the very heart of the failure of UKeU was that systems and structures that may have been considered appropriate when set against the original plan became inappropriate for a venture that was almost entirely publicly funded,’ says the response.

The report says UKeU failed largely because it took a supply-driven approach that was insufficiently focused on research and marketing, and allowed the development of a £14.5m technology platform to drive its strategy.

The government response also says that bonuses paid to senior staff, including £44,914 paid to chief executive John Beaumont in 2003, were ‘wholly unacceptable and morally indefensible’.

The Education and Skills Committee’s March 2005 report followed an inquiry after a 12-month Computing investigation.

Steve Molyneux, director of elearning specialist the Learning Lab, has welcomed the tone of the government’s response, but questions why concerns were not acted upon earlier.

‘People tend to blame the technology when things go wrong and not the people, but UKeU was a people problem,’ he said.

‘UKeU has probably had a detrimental effect on other public sector elearning initiatives.’