As far as John Beaumont, the chief executive, is concerned, the thing is up and running.Offices have opened in Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong, Dubai and S?Paulo. More will follow for students in the United Kingdom and abroad, in subjects such as business and management, science and technology, health, environmental studies and law.The UKeU (short for UK e-Universities) has arrived, avoiding the razzmatazz that heralded its conception, as befits an enterprise that suffered from the bursting of the dot bubble. The British taxpayer has forked out £62m, and, so far, only £5.6m has come from its principal private partner, Sun Microsystems, far less than the matching funds envisaged.But John Beaumont is upbeat: “We have enough money to make the venture successful,” he says.The critics are sceptical. Developing good-quality distance learning is incredibly expensive, as the Open University knows. Professor Mike Thorne, vice-chancellor of the University of East London, reckons that it costs £50m to set up just one degree online. Other experts say that it costs a fraction of that, say, £3m per degree Either way, it’s a lot of money. That is because you can’t simply tip lectures or textbooks into the ether.

You have to rework the material to make it palatable to, say, the office worker in Hong Kong. You need online tutorial support, and assignments and feedback for students.”To do it properly, you are talking about very serious money indeed,” says Professor Thorne “And it takes time before you see results. It’s like the Channel Tunnel, which needed an unbelievably massive investment. No one would have started doing that with a shovel and a hole three inches in diameter, which is what we’re trying to do with the e-U. This project is underinvested.”It is also extraordinarily risky. No one knows whether people will want to study online in large numbers. Moreover, will they sign up for UKeU degrees when there are plenty of other competing qualifications?Phoenix, the for-profit university in America, may not have the cachet of many UK universities, but it gives customers what they want – vocational qualifications delivered flexibly by face-to-face teaching and e-learning.

The e-learning courses are now the fastest-growing programme, and Phoenix is now the largest private university in the United States. Its former president has been made head of Apollo International, Phoenix’s parent group, which is, like the UKeU, busily trying to muscle in on the Brazilian market.So, the UKeU will have some formidable foreign rivals in the private sector. In addition, it faces competition from cyber-universities established by other nations. Finland has a networked system for its universities; Pakistan is planning a virtual university for IT training; Malaysia is developing its university system as a regional hub; Greece is following the OU model; and France is setting up a subject-based e-learning network.”Ours is the only national e-university that is 100 per cent commercial,” says Professor Robin Middlehurst of Surrey University, who wrote the report that led to the UKeU. “That makes it difficult to make a lot of money, unless you have huge volume.”Certainly, John Beaumont has high hopes of Brazil, where there is enormous demand for higher education, and high internet usage.