UKeU

Last updated

The UKeU (UK eUniversities Worldwide Limited) was a company and website that promoted online degrees from UK universities. UKeU delivered courses over a learning environment developed by Sun Microsystems UK. It was set up with UK public funds under the auspices of the Higher Education Funding Council for England. It operated between 2000 and 2004 and was subsequently wound down having failed to deliver its targets.

Contents

Brief history

The UKeU was first proposed as a concept by David Blunkett, then Secretary of State for Education for the UK, in a speech in February 2000, as a vehicle to deliver the best of UK higher education in online fashion across the world. The Secretary of State instructed the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) to take the lead in putting this into practice.

Many universities already offered their own online courses. [1] The Scottish universities were not part of the UKeU. The idea behind the UKeU was that it would be a broker, an agent marketing online degrees and providing a technological platform to facilitate expansion. [2]

By late summer 2000, the key initial studies on business model, tools and markets had already been done and a shadow body, the e-University Steering Group had been established. By May 2001 many follow-up studies had been done and the operating company UK eUniversities Worldwide Limited had been incorporated; by summer 2001 an Interim Management Team had been appointed; and by October 2001 the Strategic Agreement had been signed by Sun Microsystems. By March 2002 a new chairman and CEO were in post and the Framework Agreement had been signed with Sun to commence development of the e-learning platform. Much of the cost of the UKeU was absorbed by the development of the technical platform and it was suggested that existing web-based learning platforms could have been used or adapted for use at a fraction of the cost. [3] Sun Microsystems contributed "£3.5 million of professional services and hardware" rather than cash. [4]

The UkeU did not award its own degrees, instead contracting with universities to offer theirs. The company focused on infrastructure development, course development support, quality assurance, and marketing. The target audiences were primarily international graduate students who wished to study online rather than come to the UK [5] By March 2003 two courses had been launched, from the Open University and Sheffield Hallam University, with many further courses following in autumn 2003 making a total of 15. By January 2004 some 25 courses were recruiting students.

The first Annual Report of UKeU is no longer easy to find but there is a detailed analysis of it by OBHE still available at http://www.obhe.ac.uk/documents/2003/Articles/UK_eUniversity_annual_report_2002_03_what_more_does_it_tell_us_

Cancellation

It became clear however, that HEFCE had been unhappy for some months, especially with the low student numbers and the lack of private finance, and had commissioned PA Consulting to carry out a Business Review of UKeU. PA reported finally to HEFCE in January 2004 and in late February 2004 HEFCE announced to the UKeU Board and to the world that they would "restructure" UKeU. Although it was not announced as such at the time, this restructuring led to a rapid decline in funds and confidence and UKeU closed as an operating entity in summer 2004. It was regarded as a failure having cost £50 m and recruited only 900 students.

These received some of the most expensive degrees in history at £56,000 each. A highly critical [report https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200405/cmselect/cmeduski/205/20502.htm] by the UK House of Commons Select committee on Education and Skills was published in March 2005. In an accompanying press release, Committee chairman, Barry Sheerman said: "UKeU was a terrible waste of public money. The senior executives failed to interest any private investors and showed an extraordinary over confidence in their ability to attract students to the scheme. Any private company which rewards underperformance of this scale would normally face severe criticism from its shareholders."

The £2m-plus wage bill for 2002 to 2003 included chief executive John Beaumont's £180,000 salary and performance-related bonus of £44,914. UKeU's executive directors received £100,000 in total bonuses during 2002/2003. [6]

HEFCE identified marketing, and inadequate market research in particular, as the key cause of the failure of UKeU. Based on an assumption that there was a huge unmet demand for internet based e-learning, too much trust was put on the PwC forecast of student numbers and the general atmosphere of enthusiasm surrounding the 'dot com boom' . UKeU did not undertake any market research despite spending £4.2 million on sales and marketing. [3] There was confusion in the branding and unique selling points of the online offerings. Mainstream UK higher education at the time relied heavily on emphasising the three elements of tradition, place, and quality. Marketing by UKeU that promised "the best of U.K. higher education with online convenience". [5]

The overall concept of a "UK e-University" lasted 4½ years, while the company in its operational phase lasted just over two. Even by the standards of e-learning burn-outs, this was fast. Unlike in many cases in the public or quasi-public sector such as TechBC or Scottish Knowledge, there was no organisation that followed on from UKeU, even in a general sense. However, a number of small components of UKeU continued more or less unchanged as spin-offs, including the eChina Programme and the e-Learning Research Centre.

The URL of the UKeU was http://www.ukeu.com but the link no longer works as the company has ceased to operate and was finally wound up in mid-2006. Much of the original content on the site can be accessed using the Wayback Machine, however.

Details of the House of Commons Select Committee on Education and Skills, their UKeU report and the evidence they received can be found at https://web.archive.org/web/20060812215051/http://www.parliament.uk/parliamentary_committees/education_and_skills_committee.cfm

A collection of reports on UKeU were in the past be found on a Higher Education Academy web site but most have vanished – though the UKeU Overview is still to be found on the HE Academy site at http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/documents/resources/web0279_ukeu_reports_1_overview.doc

The collection of reports is now at http://www.matic-media.co.uk/ukeu/

Two further volumes of reports were in preparation for release but it is believed that the release has been delayed indefinitely.

Various analyses of "why UKeU failed" have been produced, the most recent being https://www.scribd.com/doc/39811726/Lessons-to-be-learned-from-the-failure-of-UKeU

Related Research Articles

Distance education or long-distance learning is the education of students who may not always be physically present at a school. Traditionally, this usually involved correspondence courses wherein the student corresponded with the school via post. Today it involves online education. A distance learning program can be completely distance learning, or a combination of distance learning and traditional classroom instruction. Massive open online courses (MOOCs), offering large-scale interactive participation and open access through the World Wide Web or other network technologies, are recent developments in distance education. A number of other terms are used roughly synonymously with distance education.

London Metropolitan University university in City of London, UK

London Metropolitan University, commonly known as London Met, is a public research university in London, England. The University of North London and London Guildhall University merged in 2002 to create the university. With roots going back to 1848, it is one of London's oldest educational institutions.

International student Foreigner temporarily re-located for the purpose of tertiary study

International students are students who chose to undertake all or part of their tertiary education in a country other than their own and move to that country for the purpose of studying. In 2016, there were nearly 5.1 million internationally mobile students, up from 2.1 million in 2000. The United States and United Kingdom attracted one-third of all international students in 2000, falling to 28% in 2016. Australia has the highest ratio of international students per head of population in the world by a large margin..

Information literacy is a concept that defines literacy of persons with respect to informatics. The term applies to consumers of information and their ability to process said information and allocate it appropriately.

Blended learning is an approach to education that combines online educational materials and opportunities for interaction online with traditional place-based classroom methods. It requires the physical presence of both teacher and student, with some elements of student control over time, place, path, or pace. While students still attend "brick-and-mortar" schools with a teacher present, face-to-face classroom practices are combined with computer-mediated activities regarding content and delivery. Blended learning is also used in professional development and training settings.

The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) was a non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom, which was responsible for the distribution of funding for higher education to universities and further education colleges in England since 1992. It ceased to exist as of 1 April 2018, when its duties were divided between the newly created Office for Students and Research England.

Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education organization

The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) is the independent body that checks on standards and quality in UK higher education. It conducts quality assessment reviews, develops reference points and guidance for providers, and conducts or commissions research on relevant issues.

Open educational resources educational materials that can be freely used and reused

Open educational resources (OER) are freely accessible, openly licensed text, media, and other digital assets that are useful for teaching, learning, and assessing as well as for research purposes. There is no universal usage of open file formats in OER.

Educational technology is the use of both physical hardware, software, and educational theoretic to facilitate learning and improving performance by creating, using, and managing appropriate technological processes and resources.

The Higher Education Academy (HEA) is a British professional membership scheme promoting excellence in higher education. The HEA advocates evidence-based teaching methods and awards fellowships as a method of professional recognition for university teachers. The HEA was responsible for the UK Professional Standards Framework for higher education practitioners. On 21 March 2018, the HEA merged with the Leadership Foundation and the Equality Challenge Unit to form Advance HE. The HEA had premises in York Science Park, Heslington. Its work is continued by Advance HE, which now operates the Higher Education Academy's professional membership scheme.

The National Student Survey is an annual survey, launched in 2005, of all final year undergraduate degree students at institutions in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom. The survey is designed to assess undergraduate students' opinions of the quality of their degree programmes, with seven different scores published including an "overall satisfaction" mark.

Chris Cobb is a British computer scientist and Pro Vice-Chancellor, Chief Operating Officer at the University of London. He has been Pro Vice-Chancellor at University of Roehampton, London, England and prior to that was at London School of Economics.

University Alliance organization

University Alliance is an association of British universities which was formed in 2006 as the Alliance of Non-Aligned Universities, adopting its current name in 2007.

In the history of virtual learning environments, the 1990s was a time of growth, primarily due to the advent of the affordable computer and of the Internet.

British Universities Film & Video Council

The British Universities Film & Video Council (BUFVC) is a representative body promoting the production, study and use of moving image, sound and related media for learning and research. It is a company limited by guarantee, with charity status, serving schools, colleges and post compulsory education interests in the UK.

Massive open online course education service on the web

A massive open online course is an online course aimed at unlimited participation and open access via the web. In addition to traditional course materials, such as filmed lectures, readings, and problem sets, many MOOCs provide interactive courses with user forums to support community interactions among students, professors, and teaching assistants (TAs), as well as immediate feedback to quick quizzes and assignments. MOOCs are a recent and widely researched development in distance education, first introduced in 2006 and emerged as a popular mode of learning in 2012.

edX online education technology company

edX is a massive open online course (MOOC) provider. It hosts online university-level courses in a wide range of disciplines to a worldwide student body, including some courses at no charge. It also conducts research into learning based on how people use its platform. EdX is a nonprofit organization and runs on the free Open edX open-source software platform.

Blackboard Inc. American technology company

Blackboard Inc. is an educational technology company with corporate headquarters in Washington, D.C.. It is known for Blackboard Learn, a learning management system.

For-profit higher education in the United States consists of higher education educational institutions operated by profit-seeking businesses. However, as the blurring of public and private continue, for-profit education also includes for-profit mechanisms such as endowment money managers, for-profit fees for service, for-profit marketing, enrollment services and lead generation, privatized campus services, for-profit online program managers (OPMs), privatized housing, private student loans, student loan servicers, and Human Capital Contracts, also known as income share agreements.

Shaw AcademyEducation is a privately owned online education organisation based in Dublin, Ireland.

References

  1. ↑ "Flop fails to deter Britain in competing with the world". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 22 March 2016.
  2. ↑ "'Shameful waste' on e-university". BBC. 9 June 2004. Retrieved 22 March 2016.
  3. 1 2 "House of Commons – Education and Skills – Third Report". Parliament of the United Kingdom. Retrieved 22 March 2016.
  4. ↑ "UK eUniversity annual report 2002/03 – what more does it tell us?". The Observatory on Borderless Higher Education. October 2003.
  5. 1 2 "The Real Story Behind the Failure of U.K. eUniversity". er.educause.edu. Retrieved 22 March 2016.
  6. ↑ "The failure of UKeU". computing.co.uk. Retrieved 22 March 2016.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.