A lack of marketing has been blamed for the failure of the UK's e-university by higher education minister Kim Howells.

Mr Howells told House of Commons education select committee said he was "mystified" by the lack of marketing for the £50m online university, which was scrapped earlier this year.

"I get tangled up just trying to say UKeU. I don't know who dreamt that one up. It's typical of the sort of rubbish that was around at the time," he said.

UKeU was itself designed to market online degrees from British universities while providing a technological platform to make them happen.

Dr Howells, who was not higher education minister when the e-university was set up, said he would have approached the project differently.

"I would have wanted to know what marketing had been done, whether the private sector saw this as a serious business opportunity or whether it was part of this dream around at the time that as long as you were 18 years old and had a database you were going to become a millionaire."

UKeU was wound down in February having attracted only 900 students.