New university students are being offered Apple iPods as incentives by high-street banks to open student accounts, but a college in Dover has gone one step further and has started to provide MP3 players to help with the students' coursework. 

South Kent College in Dover has spent £25,000 on Apple Nanos for 250 students in the hope that, as well as music, they will listen to podcasts of lectures. 

Assistant principal Josh Coleman told the BBC that he had looked to the US and Australia for new ways to encourage learning.

The MP3 players will be handed out next month only to those teenagers who have completed all their assignments and had full attendance.

Music players are already being used by students at Georgia College and State University in Milledgeville in the US, and have become an integral part of coursework. 

But pressure group Campaign for Real Education (CRE) complained that it is wrong to offer bribes to students and that it "devalued education".

"Youngsters should want to take the courses for their own sake if they are worthwhile," said CRE chairman Nick Seaton. "It's a scandalous waste of taxpayers' money." 

But Coleman maintained that the pilot scheme had been paid for with savings made on a building project.

Keith O'Loughlin, head of technology services at technology-enabled learning provider Intuition, commented: "While there has been some controversy around this announcement, we take the view that these sorts of innovations in training will become increasingly popular with learning providers, given the explosion of podcasting in the past year or so. 

"In order to continue to provide relevant, up-to-date material to the learner, companies such as ourselves need to use all possible channels to facilitate, enable and support this."