With the government wanting 50% of students to go onto higher education, helping students decide on an institution has brought forward an interesting new business. University Choice TV is the brainchild of Michael Kesztenbaum, previously Global Head of Brand Management at Shell and Director of Strategic Marketing at the Learning and Skills Council.

Launched last September, the site gives students (and to a lesser extent parents) the opportunity to see promotional videos from 17 universities and colleges. In effect UCTV is a virtual forum to bring together potential students and institutions. Shell has already signed up as a sponsor and the company managing the project, ph5, is confident that other companies will soon follow Shell’s lead.

When we looked at the site, it seemed a little slow to load even some of the standard pages and the design looked only so-so, but the video for engineering at the University of Sheffield had us seriously thinking about retraining!

• www.ph5.co.uk

• www.uctv.org