A very significant report on graduate debt and entrepreneurship has been published today from the National Council for Graduate Entrepreneurship.
The report's findings are good news for the UK's enterprise economy but send a clear message to those involved in encouraging students to consider self-employment to nurture the obvious entrepreneurial zest and flair demonstrated in the first year of education right through to the final year and beyond. This means recognising, encouraging and rewarding students and graduates whose fledgling enterprises could be a success and a future inspiration.
It shows that the number of students anticipating setting up on their own immediately after graduation remains constant regardless of debt levels (i.e. four per cent of all students questioned want to start up their own business immediately after graduation) and this figure remains the same regardless of whether those students have no, small or large debts.
Assuming the same regional response, this would result in 2,500 new starts from 62,000 full time undergraduates currently studying within Wales, or around 850 per annum.
More worryingly, the report suggests that entrepreneurial potential is lost as students progress through the educational system i.e. first years are more likely to want to start their own business after graduation than final year students. This suggests that across the UK, there needs to be a greater effort in embedding enterprise into the curriculum across all three years of undergraduate study.
Having been involved at the coalface of trying to encourage greater entrepreneurship across universities in Wales, there is, with the odd notable exception, very little institutional commitment to the embedding of enterprise teaching across all courses and levels of HE in Wales, apart from some add-on programmes that students can join prior to or on graduation.
The Assembly needs to make enterprise education a key part of any third mission funding element and ensure that enterpris education is taken seriously by institutions in Wales and that we can increase the number of students that start up their own businesses over the next few years, especially as research clearly demonstrates that graduates, as a cohort, are more entrepreneurial than non-graduates.
Within these programmes, the study indicates that myths are dispelled over student debt. Whilst entrepreneurship does imply acceptance of calculated risk, a degree of financial burden need not be an impediment to getting off the starting blocks. Indeed, the conditions of student loan repayments are not unfavourable to graduate entrepreneurs as the self-employed only become liable to pay back debt once their business is in profit by more than £15,000, and with a good accountant, that could be deferred for a number of years.
The report's findings are good news for the UK's enterprise economy but send a clear message to those involved in encouraging students to consider self-employment to nurture the obvious entrepreneurial zest and flair demonstrated in the first year of education right through to the final year and beyond. This means recognising, encouraging and rewarding students and graduates whose fledgling enterprises could be a success and a future inspiration.
It shows that the number of students anticipating setting up on their own immediately after graduation remains constant regardless of debt levels (i.e. four per cent of all students questioned want to start up their own business immediately after graduation) and this figure remains the same regardless of whether those students have no, small or large debts.
Assuming the same regional response, this would result in 2,500 new starts from 62,000 full time undergraduates currently studying within Wales, or around 850 per annum.
More worryingly, the report suggests that entrepreneurial potential is lost as students progress through the educational system i.e. first years are more likely to want to start their own business after graduation than final year students. This suggests that across the UK, there needs to be a greater effort in embedding enterprise into the curriculum across all three years of undergraduate study.
Having been involved at the coalface of trying to encourage greater entrepreneurship across universities in Wales, there is, with the odd notable exception, very little institutional commitment to the embedding of enterprise teaching across all courses and levels of HE in Wales, apart from some add-on programmes that students can join prior to or on graduation.
The Assembly needs to make enterprise education a key part of any third mission funding element and ensure that enterpris education is taken seriously by institutions in Wales and that we can increase the number of students that start up their own businesses over the next few years, especially as research clearly demonstrates that graduates, as a cohort, are more entrepreneurial than non-graduates.
Within these programmes, the study indicates that myths are dispelled over student debt. Whilst entrepreneurship does imply acceptance of calculated risk, a degree of financial burden need not be an impediment to getting off the starting blocks. Indeed, the conditions of student loan repayments are not unfavourable to graduate entrepreneurs as the self-employed only become liable to pay back debt once their business is in profit by more than £15,000, and with a good accountant, that could be deferred for a number of years.
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