Entrepreneurship is more popular than ever. So why don't university careers teams feel confident enough to help their students succeed?

This article was written by Chris Shannon (Director at Startium ) and Andy Mew (Head of Startup Support, 英国埃塞克斯大学 ).

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In December 2023, The Association of Graduate Careers Advisory Services ( AGCAS ) launched a report: Supporting Student Enterprise and Entrepreneurship in Higher Education.?

The findings, which build on a 2019 report, are not a surprise to anyone:?

The current cohort of Millennial and Gen Z university students/graduates are increasingly interested in entrepreneurship as a post-graduation option.

Research by CIBYL backs this assertion, whereby 26% of students confirmed they were thinking of launching a business either during their studies or once they had graduated.

And university careers teams have front row seats (though they may not want them) to the rising tide of potential student entrepreneurs seeking advice.?

A prime example of this is that in the 2019 survey, 9% of careers professionals claimed entrepreneurship came up 50% of the time in their interactions with students.?

By comparison, 33% of careers professionals reported this same statistic in 2023.?

In case you were wondering, this is a staggering 266% increase in just three years.?

This should be incredibly exciting, but, according to AGCAS, there’s a problem:

“Careers services feel unprepared and lack the confidence to guide students in this area.”?

That’s not our opinion. That’s a direct quote from the report.

So, how do we ensure career advisors have access to the confidence, resources, and signposting they need?

And how do we guarantee student entrepreneurs get the support, mentoring, and guidance to maximise their success?

We look at some of the key points from the recent AGCAS survey on careers support for university entrepreneurs and some potential solutions they may want to consider.

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THE FINDINGS

Depending on your level of interest/nerdiness (ours tends to be higher than most) we picked out the five top findings we felt were of significance and interpreted what they mean.?

Here’s what we came up with:

1. Acceptance vs Confidence

The report:?

Nearly 75% of careers professionals consider enterprise and entrepreneurship a critical component of careers advice, but confidence levels to support this activity haven’t risen at the same rate. Careers professionals are seeking training, mentoring, resources, and signposting to help them support students.

Our view:?

This clearly shows a disparity in accepting the value placed on the subject and the confidence to support it - potentially harming institutional rankings (e.g. Graduate Outcomes). The challenge? Entrepreneurship evolves, will careers professionals be able to keep up given the wide-ranging portfolio they already cover?

2. Location. Location. Location.

The report:?

We can also see a drastic increase of careers and employability teams taking responsibility for student enterprise and entrepreneurship - with it rising from 37% in 2019 to 66% in 2023. Alongside this, there was also a 3% increase in support from standalone enterprise and entrepreneurship teams who sit outside careers teams.

Our view:?

There is no “best fit” for student entrepreneurship services. And - where separate careers teams/student enterprise teams exist - we would wager there’s resistance or friction between the two due to complementary and conflicting offers. To read more about this, you can check out Andy Mew’s article on the topic by clicking here.

3. More demand. More support?

The report:?

When asked what their role entails, respondents replied: advice, guidance and coaching (50%), student and graduate engagement (45%), careers education/skills development (both 44%), with enterprise and entrepreneurship (43%) placing above employer engagement (36%) and internships/placements (32%).

Our view:?

Entrepreneurship is misunderstood and supporting it is difficult to justify due to its niche perception. From the above, our question is: are 43% of resources allocated to support enterprise and entrepreneurship provision? Or has training been provided? The answer to both of these is “No” but, given its prevalence, we’d ask - why??

4. Signposting isn’t supporting (but that’s OK)

The report:?

The 2019 responses had a higher focus on signposting. By comparison, 2023 respondents emphasised the importance of connecting startups with mentors, events, and funding opportunities. Despite wanting to offer meaningful guidance, 81% of respondents stated that signposting would still be their main course of action.?

Our view:?

Early-stage businesses need access to specific knowledge and expertise from people who understand the startup environment. We shouldn’t expect Careers Advisors to also offer startup advice. The most helpful thing they can do is connect students into existing ecosystem support using tools like Startium (shameless, we know).

5. Will training save the day?

The report:?

73% of respondents were interested in finding out more about enterprise and entrepreneurship training and they wanted to avoid generic training/advice with a focus on topics including creativity, innovation, and networking. Their responses also included business planning, financing, tax, market research, and growth strategies.?

Our view:?

A key skill of student enterprise practitioners and facilitators is finding creative ways to impart knowledge. While this can be taught, it is diametrically opposed to how careers services need to operate. The topics mentioned are complicated and apply to different businesses, sectors, and founders - training alone won’t solve this problem.

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ARE THE RECOMMENDATIONS A RISK TO ENTREPRENEURSHIP?

A consideration we feel pertinent to raise is that the report could be misinterpreted to suit institutes at a time of uncertainty.?

This is a useful piece of research - with insightful findings - but it could also be used to create the lowest common denominator of support for student entrepreneurs.?

The recommendations offered as part of the report make sense, but we’ve added our view on how these may be interpreted by HEIs and the impact this could have.?

1. In the report, a proposal suggested the provision of appropriate training for all careers professionals - including enterprise professionals. A further recommendation includes training to support development of enterprising mindsets/topics startups face.?

While we fully support appropriate development opportunities for all careers professionals, our view is that some senior managers may exploit this as a cost saving mechanism.?

The report could be interpreted to show that specific enterprise roles/functions can be replaced within existing careers team structures simply by offering training to staff.

Whereby some careers roles require qualifications, student enterprise posts typically don’t, but this could be interpreted as something training can replace.?

This ignores legacy knowledge and experience in enterprise professionals, who usually have direct experience of running their own ventures that they share and impart with students.

2. A further recommendation considered the implementation of policies on student enterprise and entrepreneurship being developed by universities with steps taken to ensure that staff are familiar with these documents.

We need to recognise that the “If you build it they will come” or in this instance “If you write a strategy/policy, it will work” does not increase adoption and uptake of entrepreneurial activity.?

While we fully advocate for student enterprise and entrepreneurship to feature prominently in top-level strategies - preferably Education - it requires significant effort to implement this.

Assuming careers teams - with limited student enterprise support - are responsible for developing a strategy, it will be unlikely to achieve the impact that the institute aspires to.?

In our opinion, the role of a careers team when it comes to enterprise and entrepreneurship support should be that of a navigator, helping to connect to the appropriate support, rather than trying to be a swiss army knife of guidance/advice.

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USEFUL INFORMATION FOR CAREER PROFESSIONALS

1. EEUK: Fast Track to Enterprise and Entrepreneurship for Careers Professionals

Enterprise Educators UK and AGCAS have joined forces to run a specific set of events for careers professionals which you can register for. This aims to provide insights to entrepreneurship and the startup landscape. Find out more here.

2. Student Enterprise Structures

We recommend spending time to consider how student enterprise services could work at your institute. Check out Queen's University Belfast or the University of Strathclyde for examples of centralised support structures that excel at what they do.?

3. EEUK Webinars and Knowledge Exchange Events

Enterprise Educators UK runs regular face-to-face and online training sessions covering both the academic and professional services approach to student enterprise and entrepreneurship. You can see their upcoming events by clicking here.

4. Startium Webinars?

Startium hosts monthly webinars for staff responsible in supporting student and graduate entrepreneurs; The next webinar is on 18th April featuring an expert panel that will discuss: ‘How are Careers Services responding to increasing demand for enterprise & entrepreneurship support?’ Register your space here.?

5. Ecosystem Development Support

For institutes thinking about how to best support their entrepreneurial communities, Startium offers a broad range of digital tools and consultancy services to help map your business support ecosystem so you can connect aspiring entrepreneurs to the right support at the right time. There’s more info here (if you care).

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CONCLUSION

There are many useful insights within the report but - if it’s misconstrued - the people who stand to lose the most are the students.?

If demand for entrepreneurial support is so high, it seems foolish to risk its success by simply expanding the responsibilities of one team/group of individuals in a university.?

We worry that doing this will stretch careers services too far and impede the entrepreneurial nature of future students and graduates.

It's not realistic to expect someone who started out wanting to help students build meaningful careers, to now become an expert in all things business.?

Nor do we feel it is realistic to expect every Careers Service to have a bank of Business Advisors on payroll.

The Careers Services Team is usually the first port of call for most students when they start to plan for their future beyond university.?

Ensuring students have a positive first encounter is key - even if the student enterprise offer itself sits in a separate team/department/section.

So this begs the question, are we expecting too much of Careers Services teams? Are we stretching them too far??

We’ve seen a trend developing where these departments are repositioning themselves with new names like ‘Student Futures’,‘Careers & Graduate Futures’ and ‘Enterprise & Employability’.?

Regardless of name/structure, what we do know is that attention should be focused on developing a strong, supportive provision for aspiring entrepreneurs or at least, strong well-formed links to student enterprise teams.

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FINAL THOUGHT

There’s one last statistic in the report that we haven’t covered and that’s because it presents possibly the biggest challenge of all…

According to Group GTI , self-assessment of students in their confidence levels around enterprise and entrepreneurship shows:

• 23% see their skills as developing
• 34% perceive themselves as competent
• 35% consider themselves proficient
• 8% rate themselves as advanced

We don’t have solid data to back this statement up, but there’s a concerning sense of over-confidence among these figures - especially at the proficient/advanced level.?

We could point to ongoing data about graduate-readiness for the workforce or, more specifically, aspects of the Dunning-Kruger effect.?

Whatever approach universities take to enterprise/entrepreneurship, we have to help students gain a firm grasp on their skills/capabilities, otherwise, regardless of everything else - we’re setting them up to fail.

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The authors:

Chris Shannon is a Co-Founder and Director at Startium . He’s the best friend of a beautiful Golden Retriever called Oscar and could talk your ear off about all things ecosystem building, venture creation and university entrepreneurship. A Fellow of Enterprise Educators UK , he works with universities across the UK and Ireland helping them to design and scale impactful entrepreneurship support services. One day he hopes to be as witty as Andy Mew.?

Andy Mew is Head of Startup Support at the University of Essex. He buys lots of books about entrepreneurship that he never gets around to reading (due to his short attention span) but loves his job and the opportunities it creates. He’s the EEUK Chair for Practitioner Pathways and is happy to bore you to death with things he thinks are interesting about student enterprise in Higher Education - even if you didn’t ask him to.