By BRONWYN SELL education reporter
Auckland University is joining media giant Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation to create an international cyber university.
The "e-university" will enable students around the world to swap lecture halls for televisions, satellites or the Internet.
The university belongs to Universitas 21, a global association of 18 universities in 10 countries, which this week announced that it would form a higher-education company with a News Corporation subsidiary, TSL Education.
It hopes to offer its first courses later next year, but has not yet worked out what they will be, where they will be offered or what they will cost, said Chris Robinson, director of the Universitas Secretariat in Melbourne.
The alliance plans to become a major player in the emerging e-education market, which the Auckland University vice-chancellor, Dr John Hood, said was transforming the way knowledge was disseminated.
Dr Hood said most countries were grappling with the need to improve participation in tertiary education, and communications technologies could help.
Mr Murdoch, chairman and chief executive of News Corporation, said it would be a mutually profitable partnership with a network of "great" universities.
Mr Robinson said the courses would be tendered out and would not necessarily be developed by the universities in the alliance, but the qualifications would be endorsed by them.
Auckland University's international pro vice-chancellor, Dr Christopher Tremewan, said News Corporation would supply an electronic footprint which reached nearly 75 per cent of the world's population. It would also supply "deep pockets."
"Faced with declining Government funding for research-intensive universities, we are doing something about it and seeing the huge changes in higher education as an opportunity rather than as a threat."
The Auckland University of Technology has also signed up with about a dozen universities worldwide to offer another distance learning programme.
It hopes to launch its first courses in October.
The scheme will link students into current courses at member universities, rather than provide new courses at a cyber-university.
Varsity going global with cyber-degrees
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