PCF4 // Since 2002 the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission in the United Kingdom has funded nearly 520 students in developing Commonwealth countries on distance-learning degree programmes. Students’ courses of study include agricultural development, fisheries, health, education, and computer studies. Students’ countries of origin include Bangladesh, Ghana, India, Kenya, Pakistan, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. // The Commission’s programme has three purposes: to explore the possibilities of funding virtual student mobility alongside conventional student mobility; to increase the production of graduates in areas relating to national priorities and millennium development goals; to support developing-country universities through partnership arrangements which facilitate their offering locally based programmes. // The Commission’s paper also explores: // different models of partnerships; // the advantages and drawbacks of our scheme for its students, including evidence on gender; // the use of this mode of cooperation as a means of supporting institutional development; // technology and the limitations of access to it. // Our session will be of interest to anyone concerned with higher education, with educational collaboration across frontiers, and with ways of funding distance-learning students. Its aims include identifying good practice and exploring ways of widening scholarship opportunities through involving other agencies. The session will be planned to allow ample discussion and interaction. // Since 2002 the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission in the United Kingdom has been funding postgraduate students in developing Commonwealth countries on distance-learning degree programmes through partnerships between British and overseas universities. Under the programme the Commission has funded over 500 students who were studying with British universities on master's level courses which include agricultural development, engineering, fisheries, health, education, and computer studies. Overseas partners are in Bangladesh, Ghana, India, Kenya, Pakistan, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia. Results from an evaluation are now available and are set out below. They confirm that the programme has enabled learners to combine their professional life with crossborder study and to do so cost effectively. // The purpose of this paper, and of the conference session based on it, is to explain what we and others running comparable programmes have been doing; outline the results achieved in terms of partnerships, of individual students, and of cost effectiveness; identify policy issues for universities, funding agencies and ourselves. // Paper ID 56