This is my Friday afternoon rant ;-)

Hotcourses did a presentation on the Education UK website on Wednesday and
I've found out some more details which people might be interested to know.

Currently the British Council hosts something called the Virtual Campus,
which is a (now out of date) listing of all universities, the main
facilities, subjects etc in an institutional profile. This is free to
members of the British Council - costs are covered by the membership
charges.

The plan for Education UK is to have a searchable database of course
profiles based on the profile information collected by UCAS. Leaving aside
the fact that the service is supposed to be up and running in January and
the info collection process has barely begun ;-) this is now what is
included as part of the British Council fee; the institutional profile
with the map, facilities, fees, tqa/rae results, contact details, etc etc
will cost an additional £2k. (This is in addition to the fee institutions
are already paying to become members of the British Council, although
there are reductions for members of the ECS - the data collection work
is being done by UCAS.)

UG applications are going to be handled by UCAS, while there is an option
to have a customised online application form. Institutions who accept
students who apply this way and who end up registering have to pay
Hotcourses 10% of the student's first year course fees. (It's not clear
how they're going to monitor conversion rates.)

Institutions have to buy their profile to include email and url contact
details - one of the most important ways for international students to
contact us - because for commercial reasons Hotcourses want to keep them
on the site to apply via them rather than coming direct to us... not very
helpful for the student. But the galling thing about that is the
institution is already paying to have their course info (plus any
additional profile info or advertising) and a link, so will then be paying
again to benefit from any registrations generated by information that they
have already paid to be there!

There are some good things about it - the search engine randomises search
results which is excellent for York because we always come at the bottom
of alphabetical lists. It's also good for institutions who come mid-way
down the tqa/rae listings - it at least gives a better chance of being
found. There's also the option to have the information translated, which
is not something many institutions do yet but responds to a known need
from careers advisors/parents/funders who may pay for students to come
here but may not speak English. Although at £20k it's pretty hefty.

None of this would be a problem if we were talking about a purely
commercial venture with one of the existing companies such as Merlin
Falcon who have offered this kind of service for years. But this is a
British Council initiative, with no branding from any of the other members
of the consortium, and as such basically gives the impression that it is a
non-commercial enterprise with the government's seal of approval. They
even have Tony Blair launching the site in January. And more than that,
you don't expect a government organisation set up with the aim of
encouraging trade, educational exchange etc to be fleecing institutions
who can't really choose not to be part of it. (There is no reduction for
smaller institutions with fewer courses, or for FEs.) At least we can be
selective about other educational directories, but this is key.

They've also chosen to tell institutions about the costs half way through
the financial year - the initial letter your international office or
communications office will have received implied that the service would be
included as part of the existing ECS membership package, even though if
you want an institutional profile - a pretty essential set of information
as users won't even have your address otherwise! - you'll have to pay
minimum £1500.

Ah, I do feel better now :-)

Kriss

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