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There’s something fundamentally wrong with enterprise education (‘why I don’t want another cupcake’)

7/23/2014

6 Comments

 
Picture
 This is just going to be a short blog, I’m just marshalling some thoughts for a paper, but there’s something fundamentally wrong with enterprise education.  I guess if we start by unpicking the muddle that is purpose we will see part of the problem.  Is enterprise education like a Duke of
Edinburgh for kids who don’t like going outside?  You know sort of all about teams, self-discovery and working together and helping the community to make you a better person? Or is it about developing skills for the workplace, in addition to those teamey ones? Or is it about running a business? Or maybe about being entrepreneurial.  “It’s all of them” I can almost hear the managerial classes shriek in delight as it ticks the equivalent of a rainbow of targets in one sweep. “That’s the brilliant thing about it.  It covers everything and more”.  
 
I have to disagree, not because it doesn’t cover these things, but because it does, albeit in a limp way.  It does when business actually doesn’t.  Business, market based business, red in tooth and claw is a million miles away from the sanitised exercises we see students engaging in.  The first sort of rule of free market business, ok not the first but the first relevant one, is moral hazard. 
If you start a business and you get it wrong you lose.  You lose enough to really sharpen your senses and make you focus.  Maybe it’s not capital but your credit rating– either way there is risk associated with any return.  Of course we don’t see this in the classroom, not only do students not risk their own money they don’t even risk grade.  Fundamentally this is not free market business.  
 
The second rule of business, above caveats on order notwithstanding, is that you must provide what the market wants.  It would seem the market wants cupcakes, more and more cupcakes.  Cupcakes and various other confectionaries.  Not that I can’t easily obtain these from my nearest bakery or  supermarket, not when I can purchase an inferior quality one at an inflated price from a, heaven forbid, social enterprise.  You see we send students out to sell to the great and the good as students not as businesses. 
These are not market based purchases but sympathy purchases.  Sympathy purchases mess up markets.  Utility goes out of the window and we pay over the odds because it’s a nice thing to do.

So now we have no risk businesses selling sympathy products.  Third on my  list, I was going to say our list but that’s a little presumptuous, is costs.  Four students working on their business for six weeks, putting in a day a week, manage to generate £1,000 profit.  Well done.  Less than you could have earned working for 24 days equivalent at minimum  wage of course, but well done.  Of course you have used the organisation’s public liability insurance as an umbrella and managed not to have to pay advertising or rent as these also form part of that umbrella but let’s not be picky.  If we were picky and rigorously applied  a hypothetical charge, like we would in making an investment decision, of course profit would shrink o something far, far less than minimum wage but that’s all rather theoretical isn’t it.

We aren’t teaching enterprise what we are teaching is a funny eclectic set of nice things.  We
have badged it as enterprise but it’s not the sort of enterprise that generates
GDP growth or wealth.  Until we get
straight what we are trying to achieve we will remain in this mire, failing
students by passing them.    


6 Comments
Charles Cracknell link
8/4/2014 06:26:52 pm

Whilst this maybe true in certain circumstances it is not in many many more, any enterprise education we do in Hull teaches the Big 13 Enterprise Skills on of which is Risk and so therefore the young people involved learn about this as well as finnancial literacy, especially in our £5 Blossom programme were busineses loan an amount to young people and it has to be paid back in the six years running it in our primary schools not one group has not paid back the loan

Reply
Steven Lyons
8/5/2014 12:31:32 am

I think that it's a bit much to be expecting students to undertake the type of enterprising activity that adds to the nations GDP in the first year of their business.

In practice it takes a business at least a year to get up and running and that's before you take into account the lack of experience these young "entrepreneurs" clearly have.

As you say there's a muddled confusion as to what "enterprise education" is supposed to be about. Are we talking about business start-up or an undergraduate degree containing some kind of enterprising aspect?

In respect of the undergraduate degree I think that it gets a bit silly when a course leader turns their back on academic rigor and starts incorporating "dragons den" style pitching or "mock enterprise exhibitions" into the curriculum.

Just as bad is when the architecture course leader decides to take it upon himself to teach his students how to write a business plan or some other document that he has no experience delivering.

Where I do think Enterprise Education adds value is in providing business start-up skills to graduates looking to start businesses either relating to the skills they've learned over the course of their studies or in relation to a passion that they have.

This is where your typical business studies student falls down because a web-developer can start a web-development company with the proper help and support but what can a business studies student seriously be expected to do?

I have an issue with unrealistic students largely from the faculty of business who think that all they need is an idea. Some kid thinking that they can dream up an "app" and get another student to make it for them and then sit back and rake in the cash.

Those looking to build a cup cake empire or maybe a t-shirt printing business aren't the most original but there's a grain of realism there and if properly executed a living.

I supported a lady looking to make and sell cupcakes last year and she's doing quite well. The first year she received help and support from us to get the business off the ground. In that time she created a brand and tested the market. At some point she'll have to invest to grow the business into one which can support her full time which might take several thousand pounds.

When she does finally take the plunge it'll be the right time to take a calculated risk. Fresh out of University with no experience isn't the time to pump £15 Grand into a new bakery!

Reply
Anil Vora link
9/3/2014 12:49:58 am

I would not write my comments,but revert at [email protected] and I will share my reasons.
You are talking to someone who multiplied his money 1000 times in 20 years by leaving UK and going to HK
Anil
www.globalinventions.co.uk

Reply
Charles Cracknell
9/3/2014 01:13:59 am

Anil - I do not understand your comment enterprise education is not all about the making of money - the big 13 enterprise skills specifically and enterprise skills in general enable young people to be more enterprising individuals and enable them to make organisations they are involved in more enterprise - hence it's not all about cupcakes - also with the changing world in terms of uncontrollable capitalism there is a more interesting response by entrepreneurs to the making of wealth and I am convinced that our young people are the ones that will change this further through taking into account one of the key enterprise skills - making ethical decisions

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Macie link
12/16/2020 04:37:56 am

Great posst thank you

Reply
Spanking Escorts Round Rock link
3/10/2025 03:29:48 pm

I think it's important that enterprise education accurately reflects real-world business challenges.

Reply



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    Dr Bryan Mills

    "There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. Some kind of high powered mutant never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die" Hunter S Thompson describing the author in 1971.

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