UKeU: ‘driven by fear’
p2pnet.net News:- Britain’s £50m (about $92,660,250) online university project, dumped this year, had major problems, says higher education minister Kim Howells.
For one thing, the serious lack of marketing meant only 900 students were ‘recruited’, he told a committee of MPs, and for another, even the name – UKeU – was hard to say, states a BBC report.
Howells said UKeU appeared to have been driven by a fear that online university education would be dominated by institutions in the US – and that the UK needed to set up its own provider, particularly for overseas students.
"Dr Howells, who was not higher education minister when the e-university was set up, said that he would have adopted a more carefully-researched approach to the project," says the BBC, adding:
"When the blueprint for the e-university was being set out four years ago, the funding council had promised a "dynamic new way of delivering high quality higher education to students via the internet".
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See:-
driven by a fear – E-university’s record ‘abysmal’, BBC News Online, November 9, 2004
