Dr. Jeremy Williams

Since its launch in July last year Universitas 21 has become widely acknowledged as the boldest venture in online business education to date. Quite simply it offers MBAs of the highest global standards at a fraction of the cost of studying in a bricks-and-mortar institution.

'Universitas 21 approached me three times about this job before it finally clicked and I realized exactly how revolutionary this whole idea really is,' says E-Learning Director Dr. Jeremy Williams on a visit from the online business school's base in Singapore.

'Online learning is ideal for MBA students who need to combine a full-time job with studies. You sit in front of a PC all day at work, so why not also use this same interface for studying? Of all the education programmes in the world, the MBA is the one that lends itself most to online studying.

'At Universitas 21 we offer the very highest standard of MBA course, and the 16 member universities have insisted on an extraordinarily stringent process to develop the courses to world best practice. We have the best professors for each subject and double and even triple blind referencing.'

There are presently 250 students sitting Universitas 21 MBA courses and 1,000 applications being processed. Dr. Williams is confident that there will be 800-900 students by the end of the year. 'And we anticipate having tens of thousands of students within a short period of time,' he says.

'We do enjoy a huge competitive advantage over a bricks-and-mortar business school. Our fixed costs are much lower and we can pass this advantage on to our students.'

Fees at Universitas 21 vary according to the purchasing power of the country of the student's residence. In the GCC a standard MBA course costs $12,850 but it would be much cheaper to study online from India, for example.

'What students get is an outstanding faculty. We reject 80% of applicants and all of them have to under go our online faculty training programme for three weeks. So we can be sure we have the best teachers delivering our courses.'

Dr. Williams is a passionate advocate of the benefits of online education. 'Every time you log on to the website you have access to a learning community, so you are not going to be lonely. We use asynchronious threaded discussions for chatting but don't webcast lessons. Voice-over-IP is something we think will be big in the future.

These are early days but Universitas 21 has a great product and fully levers the cost-advantages of the Internet to the advantage of the MBA student. Presently there are 37 students enrolled in the Middle East and admission requirements vary according to experience. Clearly there are going to be many more.