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Entrepreneurship and the graduate

It’s Entrepreneurship Week on Bdaily. Charlie Ball, deputy director of research at the Higher Education Careers Services Unit gave his views on a flourishing culture of entrepreneurialism amongst graduates in the UK.

Entrepreneurial spirit isn’t just the reserve of the more experienced, it’s alive and well among the young and particularly rife with the new generation of graduates who view it as a viable alternative to a more traditional career path.

Last year thousands of graduates were successfully self-employed, many using blogs and social media to promote their skills and work to a wide audience. Latest figures show that 4.6% or 7,690 of new, employed first degree graduates classed themselves as self-employed and they made up part of the 4.2 million people who were self-employed in the UK last year.

Entrepreneurship appeals to graduates for different reasons. Some identify a niche in the market and hope to provide a much-needed service. Others simply want to be their own boss. An unstable economy and tough jobs market has also driven graduates down this path. What’s consistent is that the proportion of new, working graduates taking this route is increasing and it has been this way since the start of the recession – 3.3% (2007), 4.4% (2011) and 4.6% (2012).

Traditionally self-employment is more common within particular sectors. Graduates seeking careers in which freelancing is common such as media, marketing and the arts should be prepared to work for themselves at some point. The latest figures reported in the ‘What do graduates do?’ journal consolidate this notion - almost two-thirds of graduates working as artists, more than a third of textile designers and 85% of musicians were self-employed or freelancing six months after graduation.

Self-employed graduates undertake a variety of occupations. Nearly half of those in self-employment were working as arts, design, culture and sports professionals in occupations such as, musicians, composers, directors/producers, vocalists, fitness instructors and many more. All garden designers, upholsterers and electricians were also self-employed.

What’s interesting is that while entrepreneurialism is common in particular sectors, the people who take the self-employment route are from a wide range of degree disciplines. Last year 5% of computing science graduates, 5% of physics graduates, 4% of English graduates and 3% of history graduates were self-employed.

Geography doesn’t play a part in defining whether a graduate would choose self-employment either - while last year a third of entrepreneurs were based in London and the South East six months after graduation a significant proportion were based in the South West (8.8%), the North West (8.8%) and the East of England (7.7%).

University promotes entrepreneurialism, academically and socially, to the benefit of graduate employability. Relevant skills development such as project management, enhanced communication, budgeting, business planning, networking and leadership are commonly embedded in the curriculum and highly prized by employers. Joint ventures and initiatives between universities and the business world support this development with on campus help, and societies and organisations set up to encourage those who want to work for themselves. This is good news for graduates and good news for the economy - encouraging entrepreneurial spirit among the young.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Higher Education Careers Services Unit .