Entrepreneurship education for college and university students By Yuk Fong Chin & Fung Lan Yong

Entrepreneurship education for college and university students

By Yuk Fong Chin & Fung Lan Yong

Published in “Daily Express Sabah” on January 31, 2016, Page 28

Entrepreneurship education plays a crucial role in the development of professional skills that are essential for the economic transformation of Malaysia, which aims to generate a creative and innovative community to help attain its Vision 2020 goals.  Entrepreneurship education in Malaysia strives to equip college and university graduates with the knowledge and skills that enable them to accelerate its socioeconomic development.  It prepares students to face the challenges of globalization and initiate innovative business ventures instead of solely relying on the current job market.  Most importantly, it instils awareness and interest in entrepreneurship, encouraging students to apply entrepreneurial attributes and values to carve their own professional destiny in the corporate world.     

Increases employment of fresh graduates

An effective way to promote innovation and accelerate socioeconomic growth in Malaysia is to train college and university students to become future entrepreneurs.  Such an initiative will increase employment of fresh graduates in the private sector, shielding them from a stagnant job market, while motivating them to create their own jobs. It spurs them to think outside the box concerning their majors, empowering them to pursue entrepreneurial career objectives rather than depending on traditional pathways.  Additionally, entrepreneurship education enables them to weather global recession more effectively as it teaches them how to earn a living as well as how to live.

Helps create one’s career path

An increasing number of fresh graduates in Malaysia have realized that they can no longer depend on a basic degree to get a job.  Companies nowadays rarely give full-time positions to their interns due to economic constraints and global competition.  Fresh graduates no longer have a traditional path to grow their career; hence, they have to be responsible for their own career by creating their own path. 

One effective way to create one’s career path is by starting a small business or a side project to gain entrepreneurship experience, which is useful in order to get entry-level positions.  Entrepreneurship education provides students with opportunities to develop generic attributes or soft skills in business settings, including interpersonal communication, teamwork, and leadership skills. Further, graduates with entrepreneurial experience will become more accountable for their actions, assertive in communicating with others, and able to execute effective sales skills, besides bringing fresh perspectives and innovative ideas to the Malaysian workplace.

Entrepreneurship education enables college and university students to graduate as doers, makers, and cutting-edge thinkers whom Malaysia needs.  Fresh graduates should be able to create companies that will provide long-term employment because jobs of the previous generation have become obsolete.  Hence, graduates should be innovation-ready by acquiring critical-thinking, communication, and collaboration skills that will help them invent their own careers.

Adds value to a diploma or degree

Entrepreneurship education adds value to a college diploma or university degree, assuring students that their tertiary investment is worthwhile despite an unpredictable economy.  It instils an entrepreneurial ethic by requiring students to experience the advantages and disadvantages of being an entrepreneur, exposing them to real-world experiences, such as entrepreneurship centres, venture incubators, and other business venues.   Student-led, such education gives them an opportunity to determine the entrepreneurial priorities of a college or university; for example, they can develop their own innovative ideas and engage in collaborative work by participating in a productive venture accelerator.

Fosters a comprehensive, socially responsible, and global education

Comprehensive, entrepreneurship education allows students to experience the entire entrepreneurship process, including idea generation and business planning, development and implementation, and launching and implementation.  Besides lecturers, students can receive mentoring from alumni with entrepreneurial experience.  Socially responsible, entrepreneurship education encourages students to pay attention to social issues while creating ventures; they are required to consider the triple bottom line of entrepreneurship initiatives, including economic viability, social responsibility, and environmental safety. Further, entrepreneurship education motivates students to practise reverse innovation by developing inexpensive products or services for new markets overseas. Since Malaysia’s socioeconomic progress will depend on making inroads into global markets, it is crucial that tis college and university students learn entrepreneurship with an international perspective.

Enhances creativity, generic attributes, and lifelong learning

Equipped with entrepreneurial knowledge and skills, college and university graduates will be more capable of capitalizing on their creativity, demonstrating higher self-esteem, and projecting an internal locus of control over their professional and personal lives. They will have the generic attributes or soft skills not only to start a small business, but also to grow it into a big business.  Additionally, entrepreneurship education for college and university students in Malaysia helps foster a robust business culture that maximizes individual and collective socioeconomic success at both national and international levels. 

Besides creativity and generic skills, entrepreneurship education allows students to engage in lifelong learning, benefitting them at different levels and in different contexts.  Students often actively participate in entrepreneurship building activities in a progressive manner, allowing them to develop the insight necessary for discovering and creating entrepreneurial opportunities, and to gain the expertise essential for starting and managing their own business.  

Developmental process for all academic levels

Entrepreneurship education highlights to students that entrepreneurship is a developmental process with distinct stages that nurtures their entrepreneurial spirit through all academic levels; for example, entrepreneurship is infused in a mass communication course at Jesselton College Sabah, providing the context for learning other fundamental skills, while enhancing students’ learning motivation.   At Jesselton College Sabah, mass communication students are required to produce a business plan by applying the entrepreneurial framework, which includes the five phases of idea generation, opportunity evaluation, planning, company launch, and growth.

Relevant to all socioeconomic backgrounds

Students of different socioeconomic backgrounds will benefit from entrepreneurial education because it encourages them to become creative problem solvers by nurturing their unconventional talents and skills.  It allows them to address such socioeconomic issues as social justice, job discrimination, and unemployment.  Further, entrepreneurship serves as an agent of social justice by encouraging the disenfranchised (dropouts, ex-convicts, and other disadvantaged) to capitalize on their unrealized talents in order to start a small business.  Many of the previously disadvantaged have become cobblers, hawkers, carpenters, and construction workers.

In the USA, prison entrepreneurship programs pair prisoners with top-level mentors to help them gain business savvy.   Such programs help reduce recidivism because many ex-prisoners will be able to get a job instead of returning to crime.

Further, entrepreneurship education promotes economic self-sufficiency among people with special needs.  For example, entrepreneurship in the form of self-employment provides individuals who are physically or mentally challenged with the potential to create and manage small businesses in which they act as their own boss.

Furthermore, entrepreneurship education has spurred immigrants and women to start their own business, helping them to create better lives for themselves and their families, while playing an impressive role in nation building.  Today, immigrants and women in Malaysia account for millions in revenues, conducting all kinds of businesses, from selling food, herbs, batik to healthcare products.  College and university students should emulate these self-made businesspeople, many of whom are optimistic and persistent risk-takers who know that they have nothing to lose.

Encourages risk-taking and learning from mistakes

Entrepreneurship education fosters the development of positive character traits among college and university students.  It exposes them to challenging tasks that motivate them to take calculated risks and learn from mistakes, which in turn promotes ingenuity, perseverance, and innovativeness.  Additionally, entrepreneurship education embraces skills and talents that are not emphasized in a conventional curriculum.  It teaches students to appl unconventional methods to solve problems, for instance, through mind-mapping, parallel thinking, and other creative problem-solving strategies.  It respects students who do not fit in or are not academically oriented by encouraging them to capitalize on their emotional intelligence instead.  In other words, entrepreneurship education benefits average students who are good at a variety of things, but do not excel in a particular subject.  Nevertheless, many of these students tend to possess divergent thinking that allows them to overcome the barriers faced by new companies by connecting the dots in different ways.

Promotes social and emotional wellbeing

Entrepreneurship education allows students with special needs to channel their energy and attention into something they prefer rather than being stuck in a conventional classroom that they find boring and meaningless.  Students with special needs tend to have limited attention spans that prevent them from doing well in regular school subjects.  However, when provided with entrepreneurship training, they are able to concentrate on business endeavours that they find challenging and fulfilling.  In brief, entrepreneurship education enhances the social and emotional wellbeing of students, allowing them to pursue and attain their preferred vocational goals.  Being able to pursue their own entrepreneurial goals also gives them a greater sense of achievement and control over their own destiny.    

Promotes doing well by doing good

Social entrepreneurship turns students into business owners who care about the larger community; for example, they can start an organic food business that allows students from low income families to volunteer at the café for food credits.  Additionally, students can form a consulting company that helps various organizations create better relationships with clients.  Others can design websites, video-chat programs, or social media plans for non-profit organizations or for companies to connect with potential interns.  In brief, social entrepreneurship satisfies students’ desire to create a socially responsible business and to undertake something that they are passionate about, allowing them to thrive in their own career paths and formulate their preferred lifestyle.  It enables them to serve the community with a more fulfilling purpose in mind, defining a new generation that prefers to do their own thing and work for companies that regard profit-making and social welfare as equally important.

Teaches students to fail gracefully

Entrepreneurship education teaches students not only to start a business but also how to fail gracefully.  They learn to plan worst-case scenarios exit strategies and how to treat investors with care after a business folds.  Students may have a lot of energy, passion, and ideas; nevertheless, they need to know the fact that many ventures do fail.  They learn that business is not always about profit-making, but the entrepreneurial spirit they develop and the lessons they learn while doing it.  Those who fail early and fail cheap at their first venture tend to be more capable of achieving greater success in the future.           

Provides access to talented mentors

Many colleges and universities have integrated successful entrepreneurs into their faculty as they latter can share real-world experiences with students and provide valuable insight into the exciting world of entrepreneurship.  Further, socially responsible entrepreneurs are eager to interact with college and university students, sharing their entrepreneurial experiences and business tips.  Further, they can train students to do incorporation paperwork, develop marketing plans, or work with angel investors. They can also teach students concerning case studies, team projects, and market analyses that help them develop the competencies for business success.  Finally, integrating entrepreneurs into non-business majors (tourism, human resource development, education, law) helps produce well-rounded graduates who can cope more effectively in the global world; every graduate, regardless of his or her major, requires basic entrepreneurial knowledge to succeed in his or her field. 

Promotes holistic development

Entrepreneurship education emphasizes personal development, business development, and entrepreneurial skills development of students.  Personal development involves building confidence, motivating progress, strengthening the entrepreneurial mind-set, fostering a desire to achieve, and inspiring action.  Business development involves teaching technical and financial literacy and self-employment skills that can result in personal improvement.  Entrepreneurial skills development provides training in social skills, networking, creative problem solving, opportunity seeking, leadership, and community cooperation; it also includes dealing with bureaucracy and local cultural norms.  Hence, entrepreneurship education provides a blended learning experience that allows students to acquire business knowledge and skills with the best tools and approaches.  Students also have the opportunities to engage more directly with the community, through schools, community centres, church, and other organizations.

Enhances social inclusion

Entrepreneurship education promotes social inclusion by highlighting the role of entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial finance, fair play, civic administration, and banking.  It encourages students to understand and feel the emotional content of entrepreneurship, to seek role models, and to create higher levels of aspiration. Further, it trains students to argue “about” entrepreneurship and “for” entrepreneurship, to practise enterprise in different social and cultural settings, and to access social capital that can provide practical help. It also requires students to research on what is cutting edge, current, and dynamic in business, besides providing access to resources, markets, and internship opportunities.

Raises awareness on the triple bottom line

Entrepreneurship education teaches students the importance of maintaining the triple bottom line in business.  Students learn that effective entrepreneurs will be preparing three different bottom lines.  First, they learn the traditional measure of corporate profit or the bottom line of the profit and loss account. Second, they learn the bottom line of a company's people account or an indication of how socially responsible the company has been throughout its operations. Third, they learn the bottom line of the company's planet account or a measure of how environmentally responsible it has been.  Overall, entrepreneurship education makes students become more aware of the significance of the triple bottom line in business, including profit, society, and planet.  They learn that successful entrepreneurs not only assess the financial, but also the social and environmental performance of the company.

About the writers:

Yuk Fong Chin is the CEO of Jesselton College Sabah. Fung Lan Yong teaches Academic English, Journalism, and Entrepreneurship at the same college. She also serves as Honorary President of its Psychological Society.