Enterprise and Entrepreneurship Education: Where Are We Now and Where Do We Want to Get to?
Helen Hook, Chair of the AGCAS Enterprise and Entrepreneurship Task Group and Enterprise Educator at University of Birmingham, shares AGCAS research into the confidence of careers professionals to deliver enterprise education to students. She identifies ways to improve staff confidence, sharing practice from University of Birmingham and issues an invitation to join a wider enterprise educator network.
Enterprise and entrepreneurship skills are vital for all students and graduates, regardless of their future career plans. This is recognised across the sector, with a significant recent increase in the proportion of university careers services having responsibility for student enterprise and entrepreneurship education. Developing enterprising mindsets, behaviours, and skills supports social wellbeing and agility in an evolving labour market.
We know that student demand for this is strong. Cibyl student survey data from 2023 shows that enterprise and entrepreneurial ambition continues to grow in importance for UK graduates: “Of nearly 38,000 students surveyed, 11% are already running their own business; and of a further 33,500 students surveyed, 26% agreed with the statement ‘I am thinking about founding my own start-up during or straight after my studies”. According to Graduate Outcomes survey data, graduate entrepreneurs represented 8.7% of all higher education leavers in 2020. This figure has gradually increased from 8% in 2018.
But despite the benefits of, and demand for, these skills, research carried out by the AGCAS Enterprise and Entrepreneurship Task Group showed that careers professionals lack confidence in providing student-facing enterprise and entrepreneurship support. While three quarters of careers professionals regard these areas as an intrinsic part of careers advice, only half feel confident in providing this support to students. This research was based on a survey of 101 AGCAS members, conducted between February and March 2023. It was compared with a previous survey completed in 2019 to track progress.
Increasing careers staff confidence in this area is key to maximise the benefits of this education for all. As graduates are increasingly required to demonstrate greater career agility to navigate a complex labour market, a deeper understanding of what it is to be entrepreneurial is crucial. This applies to careers professionals as much as to graduates. As one research interviewee put it, it is important to become “a more entrepreneurial careers adviser, because if you can practice the value of an entrepreneurial mindset in a profession you are familiar, qualified in and comfortable with, then you start to see how you can help others.”
Embedding with Impact
Where enterprise and entrepreneurship support are delivered in multiple settings across institutions, staff should seek opportunities for collaboration to ensure consistency. The University of Birmingham Student Enterprise and Entrepreneurship Working Group is instrumental in designing and growing a university enterprise ecosystem. Having a coordinated approach provides links to our academic community and other influential stakeholders. It also ensures that the value of being entrepreneurial is realised both in terms of skill acquisition and start-up opportunities. This activity is embedded within the university’s employability strategy, creating positive destinations and outcomes for graduates, as well as providing a pipeline of student and graduate businesses for the university’s incubator and business growth programme Elevate.
In addition to internal collaborations, it is valuable to explore which external collaborations can enhance your offer to students. Partnering with organisations like The Freelancer Hub can support careers teams access materials to support students likely to seek a freelance career.
It is important to have policies on student entrepreneurship and enterprise education, and ensure staff are familiar with these. This should cover topics including how a pipeline of entrepreneurial activities is developed for students at all levels, within and outside the curriculum; how you engage internal and external stakeholders to develop an entrepreneurial eco-system; and which metrics you use to evaluate and measure impact.
Not just start-up
In AGCAS’s 2019 and 2023 surveys, we asked for views on the statement ‘Entrepreneurship is just about start-up’. In both years, more than 90% disagreed/strongly disagreed. Careers practitioners are expanding their definitions of enterprise and entrepreneurship, empowering students to explore what these concepts mean in their own career contexts. They are helping students understand the crossovers between working independently and being employed – including opportunities for intrapreneurship.
The more opportunities we provide for students to develop their entrepreneurial agency, the more they will develop competencies such as taking initiative, coping with uncertainty, mobilising others, learning through experience, and building self-efficacy, motivation and perseverance. Productive opportunities might include:
Proactively seek opportunities to work with academics to embed contextualised Enterprise & Entrepreneurship Education into the curriculum.
Signpost students to activities outside the curriculum which support entrepreneurial mindsets or provide opportunities to test business ideas. Where relevant, work with academics to embed such activities into modules.
Find regular opportunities to share employer insights from various sectors on why they look for entrepreneurial skills, mindsets and behaviours when recruiting.
Invite alumni speakers at student events or on modules to share how developing an entrepreneurial mindset benefited them at university and beyond.
Find regular opportunities for students to reflect on the entrepreneurial skills they are developing across their full university experience.
Design student-facing online courses to extend the reach of your work on topics like ‘entrepreneurial mindset’ or ‘social entrepreneurship’. University of Birmingham have a suite of micro courses which have been popular with students and also academics who embed the short courses into their modules.
In all our work, we must reinforce to students the message that developing these skills and competencies will help them adapt to change, become lifelong learners, and future minded. This will be crucial to them navigating a rapidly changing, global society and the fourth industrial revolution.
Training and Networking
In light of the report’s findings, and to address the clear training gap, the AGCAS Enterprise and Entrepreneurship Task Group partnered with Enterprise Educators UK to launch a tailored version of their Fast Track to Enterprise and Entrepreneurship course for careers professionals. This course ‘jargon busts’ the language of enterprise and entrepreneurship and shares good practice from across the sector. Our first event in autumn 2023 welcomed careers advisors, employability leads, entrepreneurship co-ordinators, and heads of service to collectively learn and discuss useful frameworks and toolkits when supporting student start-ups and embedding enterprise education into the curriculum.
The AGCAS Enterprise and Entrepreneurship Task Group will continue developing training for careers professionals. We are also developing a community of best practice so careers professionals can share their successes and challenges. Keen to get involved and learn more?
Contribute a case study of how you are embedding enterprise and entrepreneurship into your service.
Attend the next Fast Track to Enterprise and Entrepreneurship for Careers Professionals in April 2024. Dates for July 2024 can also be found.
Listen to Advance HE’s The 3E Podcast to hear figures from across UK higher education discuss issues related to employability, enterprise and entrepreneurship, and how career professionals can implement them within.
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