Edinburgh Napier University: Where being enterprising pays dividends

Work experience while at this Scottish institution is positively encouraged

February 26, 2015

Traditionally, many universities have been ambivalent about undergraduates’ part-time jobs, recognising the imperative to earn money but fretting over the impact on study time.

At Edinburgh Napier University, there is a different attitude: students are encouraged to take on paid work and in future may be offered academic credit for their efforts.

However, they are unlikely to be able to put hours spent stacking shelves or serving up lattes towards their degrees. Instead, the roles that are available via the university are the sort that are likely to stay on graduates’ CVs for slightly longer, including opportunities in market research, graphic design and product development.

These are offered by Bright Red Triangle, the university’s “one-stop shop for extracurricular student enterprise activities”, which runs a commercial consulting practice.

Businesses that are looking for solutions to particular problems can approach the university, which will allocate a team of student “junior consultants” to the task. They will be assisted by “senior consultants” – either Edinburgh Napier academics or business leaders with experience of the topic in question.

The aim is to give students experience of tackling “real world” business problems, while offering companies a cost-effective alternative to commissioning professional consultants.

Students are paid for their efforts and the projects tend to be short term and flexible, allowing them to be fitted in around academic work.

Other examples of projects that have been completed by Bright Red Consultancy include due diligence on potential investments, conference planning and corporate videos.

Nick Fannin, business adviser at Edinburgh Napier’s School of Management, said the consultancy work had proved very popular with students. Over the past two years, there have been 500 applicants, with 60 students being taken on to work on 40 projects. Successful candidates gain experience that will prove invaluable in the job market, Mr Fannin explained.

“It’s about turning out well-rounded people that are able to function in the real world,” he said. “I think the reality is that they need these extracurricular experiences to give themselves the edge.”

In future, the university will consider whether students who work on several projects could be given academic credits for their efforts.

The benefits for businesses go beyond getting good-quality work done for a reasonable price, Mr Fannin continued.

“They are engaging with the university and giving young people a chance, but if they ‘try before they buy’ and get a decent student to work on a project, they have a good student to take on”, on a permanent basis, he said.

Entrepreneurship is also a major focus for the university. It hosts several incubators offering free office space to students, graduates and alumni, and in Scotland is second only to the University of Edinburgh in terms of student start-up activity.

Since the university opened its first incubator in 2004, it has helped about 300 businesses to launch, and 158 of these are still active. At any one time, about 50 students and graduates are using the incubators to develop their ideas for new enterprises.

Edinburgh Napier’s aim, Mr Fannin said, is for every student to be given an opportunity “to engage in an enterprise activity”. This does not have to sit apart from the university’s academic efforts, however.

One innovative part of Edinburgh Napier’s approach has been the development of materials and modules on entrepreneurial skills for all students, whatever course they are on.

The idea is that it is not just business students who need to know how to budget or negotiate, or even to draw up a business plan. These skills will be needed by students from a wide range of backgrounds, particularly those who choose a self-employed career, including musicians and creative writers.

“The reality is that these are enterprise skills, and that’s what we are teaching,” said Mr Fannin.

This focus reflects recognition that universities are increasingly judged on student satisfaction, and that this is based not just on the experience students have at university. The job they get afterwards is also a factor, and teaching entrepreneurship can help, Mr Fannin said.

“Napier has always been very proud of its graduate employability statistics, and we want to continue in that vein,” he added. “With the changing job market, there are increasing numbers of self-employed people, and the skills they require are in this [enterprise] area.”

chris.havergal@tesglobal.com

In numbers

500 students applied to do extracurricular consultancy work, and 60 were successful

Campus news

University of York
A major new open access database of immigrants to England in the late-medieval period has been launched. The database, England’s Immigrants, details 65,000 immigrants who arrived between 1330 and 1550 from as far away as Greece, Portugal and Sweden, as well as from elsewhere in the British Isles. The project’s leader, Mark Ormrod of the University of York, said: “The research provides a deep historical context for modern debates about the movement of peoples.”

University of Leeds
A university has acquired thousands of hours of unseen interviews with many of the world’s leading artistic figures, recorded for ITV’s The South Bank Show. The official handover of the tapes last week to the University of Leeds was attended by Melvyn Bragg, Leeds’ chancellor and editor and presenter of the arts programme throughout its 32-year run.

Lancaster University
Reinforcing links with the community is the aim of a university’s “campus in the city” initiative. Lancaster University’s programme got under way on 14 February, starting 11 weeks of events in the city centre that will reach out to new audiences and showcase the university’s work. Partners include the Chamber of Commerce and the city’s Business Improvement District. Last year’s project attracted 3,384 people to a diverse range of events, from exploring the impact of the First World War on local communities to a talk on the Mafia.

Arts University Bournemouth
A southern arts university was turned into a creative agency for 24 hours and students worked on a brief to promote awareness for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. Students doing a variety of courses at Arts University Bournemouth worked in teams on a creative brief set by the RNLI on 24 February. The scheme, known as AUB 24, has been running for several years, and previous clients have included Jimmy’s Iced Coffee and Bridport Arts Centre.

University of Edinburgh
A television producer has been elected the new rector of the University of Edinburgh, nearly half a century after his first attempt. Steve Morrison was the first Edinburgh student to run for rector, in 1969, and went on to co-found all3media – the company behind television shows such as The Only Way Is Essex, Skins and Shameless. In the election, held on 11 February, Mr Morrison took 62 per cent of the vote, defeating the serving rector, Peter McColl.

Northumbria University
UK academics are taking part in an international project to build the world’s biggest solar telescope. The $344 million (£220 million) Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope will be able to pick up unprecedented levels of detail from the surface of the Sun, once it is built in Hawaii. Northumbria University’s solar physics research group will play a leading role in developing software that will help experts to understand data from the telescope.

Queen Mary University of London
Stress in young bees may be responsible for the dramatic slump in the world’s bee population, according to researchers. When older bees die prematurely because of disease or lack of food, young bees have to leave hives early to find food, say scientists at Queen Mary University of London, who attached radio trackers to thousands of bees to monitor their lifespan. But younger bees are less adapted to finding pollen and die more quickly, accelerating the collapse of colonies, according to the study carried out with Macquarie University in Sydney, the University of Sydney and Washington University in St Louis, Missouri.

University of Sussex
Campaigns to encourage students to drink less alcohol should focus on the benefits of abstinence rather than the risks of heavy consumption, according to new research. A PhD student from the University of Sussex found that students were less likely to binge drink when the benefits of abstinence, such as having more money and better health, were promoted. Dominic Conroy, now a research fellow at Birkbeck, University of London, surveyed 211 English university students. He said existing health promotion advice does not always indicate the range of benefits that reducing alcohol consumption offers.

Times Higher Education free 30-day trial

Register to continue

Why register?

  • Registration is free and only takes a moment
  • Once registered, you can read 3 articles a month
  • Sign up for our newsletter
Register
Please Login or Register to read this article.

Sponsored