Tuesday, May 2, 2000

Britain Moves Forward With Plans for a Major E-University By DAVID WALKER London The British government has commissioned a business plan for a major international "e-university" that planners say will give British institutions "the capacity to compete globally with the major virtual and corporate universities being developed in the United States." The business plan is a key step toward creation of the new online university, which Labor Party officials hope will help realize a promise by Prime Minister Tony Blair -- to enroll at least half the country's young people in higher education by the time they are 30 years old. Government officials say that the United States is pre-eminent in developing Web applications for education, but they add that Britain can draw on its "world-class reservoir of experience and expertise" in developing the new university. The institution, they say, will benefit from English's being the preferred medium of educational instruction. Consortia of institutions will be invited to bid to create the e-university, which will offer online instruction up to the bachelor's-degree level, as well as a new two-year degree under development in Britain. There will be no physical campus. Partnerships are being contemplated with universities outside Britain -- including institutions in China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and the United States. Britain's Open University, a pioneer in distance learning, is likely to lead the bidding, but the government hopes that leading research institutions -- such as the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, in London -- will also get involved. The government wants other institutions to follow the lead of the Open University, which offers a master's business degree online, and Birkbeck College, in London, which offers an online postgraduate degree in crystallography. The e-university will focus solely on teaching and will carry out no research. Instruction will rely on Web pages enhanced with hyperlinks, video, sound, and graphics. The consultants who are preparing the business plan were recruited by the government's Higher Education Funding Council. Financial details are sketchy, but the council says it will "prime the pump." Start-up costs have been estimated at $190-million over two years, but the council hopes private companies will pay much of that. Besides attracting students from other countries, the council says, the e-university will appeal to the large number of British high-school students who graduate but do not enter college, a figure that is estimated to be 80,000 annually. In a speech in February announcing the e-university, Education Minister David Blunkett warned universities that they had no choice but to immerse themselves in Web-based and online activities. "Universities are autonomous institutions, and rightly so. But in the knowledge economy, entrepreneurial universities will be as important as entrepreneurial businesses, the one fostering the other," he said. "The 'do nothing' universities will not survive -- and it will not be the job of government to bail them out," Mr. Blunkett said. "Universities need to adapt rapidly to the top-down influences of globalization and the new technologies, as well as the bottom-up imperatives of serving the local labor market, innovating with local companies, and providing professional-development courses that stimulate economic and intellectual growth." Brian Fender, chief executive of the Higher Education Funding Council, said many British universities "are seeking to develop Web-based applications on their own or in groups." "By working together in a partnership," he said, "we can pool the resources and expertise needed to exploit more fully than any single institution can the huge possibilities offered by new technologies, and the Internet in particular, to establish a world-class provider with global reach." Background articles from The Chronicle: Britain's Open University Plans to Hold a Virtual Commencement (3/24/2000) Banking on Its Reputation, the Open University Starts an Operation in the U.S. (7/23/1999) British Universities Struggle to Serve Non-Traditional Students (7/2/1999) Universities Create On-Line Education 'Portal' (6/25/1999) Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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