Singapore has beaten Hong Kong as the site for the headquarters of what has been billed the world's largest online university, U21global. The location of the headquarters of the US$50 million (HK$389 million) joint-venture between 15 universities - including the University of Hong Kong (HKU), and a US-based information provider - was announced this week. Project organisers chose Singapore over Hong Kong because of its efforts to attract new business and educational services, government incentives such as tax relief, its position in the region, and its infrastructure. 'We fit well into a strategic plan for areas of new business there,' said university consortium, Universitas 21, managing director Chris Robinson. The U21global project will initially create up to 50 jobs for educators and IT specialists, with that figure expected to increase. The project, due to start operating in early 2003, will offer courses in English and expects to expand to Putonghua by 2006. It will initially target students from Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia for online business and technology Masters degree programmes and hopes to extend to India, Latin America and Africa. This week's announcement comes after individual universities and international unions voiced concern about the speed of U21global's planning process. A group of five faculty unions from countries including the US and Australia wrote to the project head calling for the virtual university to be postponed until all employment and academic issues were resolved. The University of Toronto, a member of the university consortium since its inception in 1997, quit during the planning stages while others worried about the level of participation they would have in the development and assessment of courses. Dr Robinson, based in Melbourne, said negotiations such as employment details were best resolved once the joint venture existed, but there had been robust debate on several issues. Each of the remaining 15 universities has pledged between US$500,000 and US$5 million. Two of the original 18 institutions that expressed interest could still agree to be involved, he said. The programme publisher, Thomson Learning, and the consortium will each contribute US$25 million to U21global. Asia was chosen as the initial focus for the English-based courses because research showed the region had the highest unmet demand for tertiary education and students were prepared to travel to study at top institutions. HKU acting registrar Henry Wai Wing-kun said the university had participated in the project because online university education was an important new trend. 'This will be the way of the future but it will not replace traditional universities,' he said. World-wide it is estimated that 32 million students miss out on higher education and that figure is expected to triple by 2010. HKU pro vice-chancellor (academic and student affairs) John Spinks said Singapore was aggressive in its bid for the headquarters and had government backing in the form of tax incentives which helped it but Hong Kong was not falling behind the Lion City. Other participating universities include Fudan in Shanghai, Glasgow, Nottingham, British Columbia, Melbourne, and the National University of Singapore. More information obtainable from: www.universitas.edu.au
