By David Matthews. Universities should teach undergraduates how to start up companies, the prime minister’s enterprise advisor has said. Lord Young of Graffham told a conference that higher education had to “instil the very concept of enterprise” into young people.
“Every undergraduate during the course of their degree - and I know exactly how little people do during their undergraduate degree…should have a short course on setting up [their] own company,” he told the Student and Graduate Entrepreneurship in Colleges and Universities conference in London on 20 March.
“The world in which they [graduates] are going to go and inhabit and work in is going to be a self-employment world, it’s going to be a small firms world,” he argued.
Graduates “may have to be more self reliant…they have to embrace the concept of working for themselves”, and universities had to prepare them for this, he said.
His comments come amid debate over the extent to which universities should prepare students for work. Read more...

And that blog title was brought to you by Derek who named my just completed trip the “MOOC and Pony Show.”
A while ago (maybe two months ago?), I was invited to give a talk about MOOCs at the American Federation of Teachers Higher Education Professional Issues Conference in San Diego. It just goes to show you what happens if you keep blogging about something long enough: pretty soon, people (might) like what you say and (might) think you know what you’re talking about. Sort of.  Anyway, a few highlights and not a lot of details for now because I am woefully behind on planning for ATTW and the CCCCs which will take me back to the Pacific time zone (this time in Las Vegas) in less than 60 hours. Read more...