Every year fresh new students enter university, these young enthusiastic people begin the next stage of their lives. They totally understand that the rules are different, they are no longer at school, no longer living with parents, have access to their own money and meeting new and amazing people in a very vibrant community.
The real trick for educators at this time of year is to facilitate this, develop this passion and ensure that it can be channelled in developing and progressing the student throughout the course.
However, with cuts in the system, staff who no longer want to teach but still want to get paid and courses which do not contain any modern related content except for that dated pre Apple/Microsoft operating systems, the chasm between the student and the educator can quickly, in a matter of hours, become only too large for either side to see why they should bother.
Equipping students for a life where they will change career four times, be in dept for most of their lives and develop relationships in virtual spaces first should be core to any persons education. Enterprising people by their nature adapt and create opportunities and we should only allow these types of people to focus our young.
Enterprising Educators are needed to ensure we develop enterprising graduates. As with the best sweet shops these come in all flavours and sizes with no one appealing to all. So how do we do this?
University educators should be part time and self employed, they should be entrepreneurs!
This would ensure that the young of today are learning from the very people that are adaptable and able to able to create opportunities. A lecturer could still do research, run a business or provide consultancy allowing the creation of more dynamic teams within the university. Its their mindset we need our youth to engage with.
University educators should also still work in the industry they teach. So if you are teaching math to engineering students, don’t get the professor of maths. His application of the subject will be purely theoretical and thus subject to doubt by the students. That doubt then generates mistrust which leads to our chasm.
University educators should know how to add enterprise into every part of the curriculum. Learning comes from lectures, discussions, assignments and lab work. Each of these should be designed to develop the enterprise capability of the student, moving them forward in understanding how they will be contributing to society during the fruitful enterprising career for the next 70 years!