Creating 'Lifelong' Graduate Outcomes Through Enterprise and Entrepreneurship
Enterprising Graduates: What we know
The UK HE Sector has, in some way, shape, or form been tracking our recent graduate entrepreneurs since 2007, creating a story that is illuminating for those of us working to support them, as well as the sector as a whole.
The recent (2022) ‘an insight report into the UK's Graduate Entrepreneurs’ shows an increase in graduate entrepreneurs of 8% since 2018, meaning that they accounted for 8.7% of all HE leavers in 2020.
Most interestingly, it is the graduates who stay local (either to their hometown or university town) that are more likely to be entrepreneurs (58%) than graduates who move away from their local area. The report also shows that those starting are most likely to be Arts and Humanities subjects, presumably “making a job” in order to follow their dreams, rather than following the traditional route of “taking a job”, which is offered in other sectors.
The report indicates clear areas for improvement, as the national issues of under-representation persist within HE (for example, the reduced number of female founders is replicated within graduate starts) and shows the clear need to further support as entrepreneurship rates are highest in Black graduates (13%), those with known disabilities (10%) and mature students (those over 30).
Many of these graduates go on to expand their business, employ others, trade nationally and globally, contributing to our economy; utilising their entrepreneurial skill set to achieve this.
And these entrepreneurial skills are equally important in today’s rapidly changing job market, where traditional career paths are being disrupted by automation and AI. These skills enable graduates to be more adaptable and innovative, giving them an advantage in the ever increasing and highly competitive job market.
The need for entrepreneurial skills and competencies
Universities recognise their responsibility to ensure that their graduates are equipped with the skills and competencies needed for success in the workforce. Enterprise education is a key part of this responsibility. It provides students with the opportunity to develop skills that will benefit them throughout their careers. Universities need enterprise education to be embedded throughout the curriculum, providing students with the opportunity to learn and practice these skills in a range of contexts.
When we track the employability and careers of recent graduates, we are aiming to improve higher education, using insight to inform policy decisions. However, it is important to remember that these metrics track individual experiences to create the data that HEI professionals pour over, but it is the individual that should be at the heart of any data set. It could be easy to forget that it is the same HE metrics that drive organisational decision making and strategy or create ‘League Tables’ and rankings often form the backbone of some of the biggest life decisions of our prospective students, as they decide which city, university, course, and ultimately what future direction to take.
Every university wants the very best future for their graduates, and every university has the same drive to support their students in achieving the very best they can achieve.
We talk about the need for our students to fully experience ‘University Life’ and to participate in additional activities and, that if they do, they will become more employable, resilient and innovative. But is there actually a connection to students that participate in enterprise activities both within and outside the curriculum to their onward journey and later career success?
I know that many people will agree with me that the enterprise skills (defined by QAA as “…creativity, originality, initiative, idea generation, design thinking, adaptability and reflexivity with problem identification, problem solving, innovation, expression, communication and practical action) are the essential life skills that would support anyone through their, studies, career path and future choices. Over the years I have had the privilege to work with students and graduates in developing their understanding, skills, and capabilities for the purpose of starting their own venture, expanding their skills and abilities and to do social good. Many of them have failed at business, but gone on to succeed in employment, why is this?
Some of them have made statements that both thrilled and shocked me, such as; ‘I learnt more during this week about business than I did in my three years in business school’ or ‘This programme has changed my life, now I know what I want to do and how I can get the most out of my degree’ and ‘This experience has helped me get my job’. All of them were shown how to develop their own ideas, identify opportunities, problem solve, mitigate risk, validate, and communicate.
If we can develop these entrepreneurial skills in our students across their time at university, they will all have a richer experience during their studies. They will also develop higher levels of competence, which will lead to greater opportunities. As highlighted in AdvanceHE’s ‘3 Es for Wicked Problems: Employability, Enterprise, and Entrepreneurship: Solving Wicked Problems’, ‘the general aims are to develop the attributes, behaviours and competencies that will increase the employability of students, to prepare them for the workplace and the challenges they may face, and to provide the tools needed to adapt their academic knowledge into the practical skills they will need in the changing workplace.’
Witnessing the difference
Last year we took on a student intern who was studying business management marketing in our Business School. Amy came across to us for her placement year as our Marketing and Events Assistant. Through her year with us we helped Amy develop her enterprise skills not only through her role and CPD but also by participating in our student enterprise programmes. Below are her words on how this experience has contributed to her final year and career post-graduation:
"Working as Marketing and Events Assistant for NTU Enterprise gave me a number of skills which have improved my employability. It taught me several transferable skills such as being able to organise and prioritise my workload, problem solve and action effective solutions, thinking analytically and communicating effectively within a team.
These skills helped me in my final year of university to manage my workload, prioritise tasks and evaluate my work in a professional way, they been extremely useful when completing my reports and essays in my final year, particularly during my research project.The skills I had learnt also came up in my interview. I believe this contributed to me being offered the job. They were a useful talking point in the interviews I undertook for graduate jobs - I was able to discuss various aspects of the role and the skills I had used and suggest ways in which they could be applied to the new role.
I accepted a role on a graduate scheme for a fast growing tech company and without having done the placement year and had the opportunity to develop these enterprise skills, I don’t think I would have got the job."
Amy Ward, NTU Graduate 2023
Amy’s voice is one of many that we have heard and connects directly with the emerging work that evidences the impact of placements.
Support in and out of the curriculum
If this experience is so beneficial to our final year students and their future opportunities, then the logic is clear: by embedding entrepreneurial skills and competencies into their degree from induction, through learning and into placement they will better experience their degree, students recognise opportunities through their time with us and enhance their graduate career success.
However, we need to consider our students’ current positions and experience of being at University. Facing a cost-of-living crisis, more of them have to take on work to earn enough to survive, reducing the amount of ‘free’ time they have to do skill-building extra-curricular activities.
We know also that returning from a pandemic has affected many of our student’s confidence in stepping out and trying new things or pushing themselves to go beyond their comfort zones.
At NTU, many of our students already undertake a placement year and Vice Chancellor Professor Edward Peck, has led the charge on establishing work like experience within the curriculum for all our students. In support of this, we have our ‘Success for All’ strategy which we are feeding into by reviewing and developing ways in which we can enable every student to access entrepreneurial skills and competencies within their studies. We have several strategies to do this, including:
Enhancing the tools our academics can access
Working with external entrepreneurs to share their knowledge and experience
Supporting the creation of learning companies
Highlighting to our students the entrepreneurial skills/competencies they are learning through existing modules and how these can translate into wider areas of their studies and lives.
There are challenges to all of this, of course: finding time in our academics’ agenda to help identify the tools they can implement, understanding that there is a balance of what we can fit into the curriculum and how we ensure our students recognise the skills they are developing and understand how to transform them for use in their future paths.
We also need to include a focus on tracking and evaluating the impact of enterprise education, both in terms of graduate outcomes and wider economic impact in order to contribute to our sectors understanding of how enterprise and entrepreneurship truly helps our graduates.
By embedding enterprise education throughout the curriculum, universities can ensure that their graduates are equipped with the skills and competencies needed for success in the workforce and contribute to economic growth and innovation.
About the author
Megan Powell Vreeswijk is Head of Enterprise at Nottingham Trent University. Megan has extensive commercial and entrepreneurial experience and has recently opened the Dryden Enterprise Centre which houses start-up, high-growth and innovation-driven SMEs, University spinouts, and, student and graduate businesses.
Megan's work spans curriculum, extra curriculum, Start-up, Growth and Scaling businesses, investment and placemaking.
Over the years she has worked with the British Council and NESTA across developing countries to support entrepreneurs and government agencies to understand the importance of enterprise and entrepreneurship in the growth of local economies. She has recently taken up the positions of Vice President of Enterprise Educators UK, working for national and international members to drive change in enterprise education, and as Vice Chair of the Nottingham Business Improvement District to support the local economic development agenda.
