eCollege Announces First Joint Venture in International Expansion Strategy

eCollege(SM) [Nasdaq: ECLG) announced a joint venture with Dubai Internet City to form “Knowledge Access,” a company that will make education more accessible to the Gulf Region and surrounding areas. Knowledge Access, which is located in Dubai Internet City (DIC), UAE, will provide the technology and support services for academic institutions and corporate training organizations to build full online programs.

“For centuries, Dubai has been a major trade hub, and through DIC, we are creating a technology and business infrastructure that can again serve the entire region,” said His Highness General Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and UAE Defense Minister. “By creating Knowledge Access with eCollege, we look forward to establishing the leading eLearning company in the region. This will build upon our legacy of contributing to society’s advancement by making education more widely accessible.”

Led by His Highness, DIC is a $2 billion, three-year initiative to establish a state of the art infrastructure for businesses operating locally, regionally and globally from Dubai. eLearning is a major priority of DIC, and as such, DIC conducted an extensive evaluation of more than 70 companies and consortia before selecting eCollege as its eLearning partner to develop Knowledge Access and its online learning initiative.

“eCollege has helped to build some of the most successful and profitable online programs in the United States, and we look to their expertise to help us expand educational opportunities through Knowledge Access.” said Ahmad Bin Byat, director general of the Dubai Technology, E-Commerce and Media Free Zone. “eCollege best met our needs because it provides a complete software and service solution in a reliable, hosted environment that is critical to the success of our program.”

eCollege recently formed eCollege International(SM) to lead its global strategy. Through eCollege International, Knowledge Access is the first joint venture formed as part of a planned approach to international expansion. eCollege’s strategy, as previously discussed in quarterly conference calls, is to partner with established organizations in regions that have the resources and commitment to help academic institutions and corporations make their programs more widely accessible online.

“With its tremendous technological competency and commitment to developing eLearning opportunities in the region, DIC is the ideal partner for our first international joint venture,” said Oakleigh Thorne, chairman and CEO of eCollege. “As we explore international expansion, we find it desirable to partner with respected entities that have the economic resources and regional knowledge, but want to rely on our experience and superior technology and support. We are excited to share our expertise through this pioneering initiative.”

Thorne continued, “We believe our international strategy can ultimately lead to market expansion and increased financial return, however, we do not expect this initial joint venture to directly impact our 2002 financial outlook. Knowledge Access is applying our proven business model in an effort to establish online programs, which provide recurring revenues that grow with the success and growth of the programs.”

About DIC
Dubai Internet City provides a Knowledge Economy ecosystem designed to support the business development of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) companies. Dubai Internet City (DIC) is a strategic base for companies targeting emerging markets in a vast region extending from the Middle East to the Indian Sub-Continent, and Africa to the CIS countries.

Since opening a couple of years ago, a dynamic, international community of more than 300 ICT companies has already identified its long-term objectives in Dubai Internet City. The global ICT giants are all here: Microsoft, Oracle, HP, IBM, Compaq, Siemens, Canon, Logica, and CISCO just to name a few. The community is also home to a host of exciting local and regional companies and promising start-ups.

The presence of companies from across the ICT industry spectrum not only has created a large pool of skills, expertise and resources that individual companies can tap into, but also offers a high quality of business interaction and networking opportunities that can be leveraged for enhanced problem solving and knowledge sharing by the community.

About eCollege
eCollege [Nasdaq: ECLG] is the leading eLearning technology and services provider to educational markets. eCollege designs, builds and supports high quality online degree, certificate/diploma and professional development programs for colleges, universities, school districts and state departments of education. eCollege’s clients include such institutions as National University; University of Massachusetts Amherst; University of Colorado; Drexel University; DeVry University, Inc.; New England College of Finance; and the Kentucky Virtual High School. The company was founded in 1996 and is headquartered in Denver. For more information, visit www.eCollege.com.

This release may contain forward-looking statements, as well as historical information. Forward-looking statements may involve known or unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the company’s actual results and performance to differ materially from the company’s outlook, including, but not limited to, our inability to achieve cost-efficiencies inherent in our international business strategy as a result of unanticipated difficulties related to technological integration that could cause delays or increase costs associated with international joint ventures; our inability to drive revenue growth through our international strategy due to, among other factors, lack of consumer and organizational acceptance of the eLearning model in the Gulf region and other regions in which we may establish similar international joint ventures, civic and political instability in the Gulf region, our customers’ ability to achieve successful online programs, our ability to successfully partner with established international organizations, and our ability to successfully penetrate international markets; our network infrastructure and computer systems failing; and such other factors as are discussed in our most recent Form 10-K Annual Report filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), which you are encouraged to review in connection with this release. We believe that these forward-looking statements are reasonable, however, you should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, which are based on current expectations and speak only as of the date of this release. We are not obligated to publicly release any revisions to forward-looking statements to reflect events after the date of this release.

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