Academic, business and political leaders came together in Halifax on Thursday to call for reform in post-secondary education, and including a greater emphasis on teaching entrepreneurship.
The speakers at the Atlantic Leaders Summit organized by the Atlantic Association of Universities voiced a near unanimous message that the region’s institutes of high education need reform, or at least improvement. They have the potential to be an economic boon, to spur innovation and to train the work force for the modern economy. But there is an urgent need for improvement in various areas, they said. Though there were several points of view, several speakers called for the university system to increase its training of entrepreneurship to better prepare student for the workplace of today and tomorrow.
“Universities should have the goal of getting everyone into that entrepreneurial experience,” said businessman and philanthropist Gururaj Deshpande, one of the keynote speakers, adding such experience teaches students to solve problems that impact society. “When you have a society of problem solvers, you live in a very healthy society.
A native of India, Deshpande is a graduate of University of New Brunswick who moved to Boston and launched four tech businesses that were listed on the Nasdaq. He is the founder of the Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Co-Founder of the Pond-Deshpande Centre for Entrepreneurship in Fredericton.
He and several other speakers said that by teaching student entrepreneurial skills, universities are teaching them to create enterprises that have impact on society, the planets and their communities.
Various themes recurred through the day, such as a need to retain more international students, and to develop a sense of urgency. Saying he was optimistic things will improve, SimplyCast CEO Saeed El-Darahali said these are matters that should have addressed long ago.
Throughout the day, speakers returned frequently to the need to give all students more entrepreneurial training.
Kevin Lynch, the Chair of the Board of Governors of the University of Waterloo, noted that Harvard Business School professor Bill Solomon has noted that entrepreneurship is not an inherent trait. It can be “taught and untaught” and our university system spends too much time “unteaching” entrepreneurship.
“Why don’t we make it a hallmark [of Atlantic Canadian universities] that everyone who comes here will have some entrepreneurial experience?” asked Martha Crago, Vice President of Research at Dalhousie University
Deshpande urged the educators to give their students knowledge that has an impact on the wider world. He also urged experiential learning because it shows students that they can apply their knowledge to solve problems, and that leads to entrepreneurship.
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