Oxford, April 2006 - The AllLearn project, a consortium among Oxford, Stanford, and Yale Universities to research online learning, has come to a close. The eLearning joint venture has folded because it failed to attract enough students.
"We offered 110 online courses from Oxford, Stanford, and Yale Universities to over 10,000 participants from 70 countries during the past five years. As we looked to the future, the cost of offering top-quality enrichment courses at affordable prices was not sustainable over time", explains S Kristin Kim, president of the company, in a statement on the website.
How much money Oxford lost on the project is undisclosed. The "Guardian Unlimited" reports that by June 2005, AllLearn had incurred a deficit of $783,410, with revenues of $2.5 million and expenses totalling $3.28 million, according to the London-based Observatory on Borderless Higher Education, which monitors international developments in distance learning.
AllLearn is reported to have been backed by $12 million in start-up funding and "operated on a budget that is much smaller than many other online education ventures", Lisa Jokivirta of the Observatory noted to "Guardian Unlimited".
According to her, the project's founders appear to have underestimated the costs of designing online courses and overestimated the number of students willing to pay tuition costs. Lack of interest rather than lack of status or brand visibility has been cited as the primary reason behind AllLearn's failure to meet enrolment targets.
AllLearn has tried to address both the pre-university and business markets. Lisa Jokivirta: "AllLearn's closure suggests that the 'general interest' market for online provision remains unproven, although this may change over time as the educational value of broadband is further explored."
