Students and faculty members alike are being encouraged to develop business proposals, seek patents for their research and think beyond the traditional post-college job. The university also is launching new classes that emphasize practical experience over theoretical learning. In one such course to be offered in the fall, students camp outside and develop outdoor-related products.
As part of the entrepreneurship program in the honors college last month, professor Jay Smith offered critiques to the students recently making their pitches. “How are you going to get that message out?” he asked. With another group, he pointed out that customers “don’t buy retail like that.”
University officials, including Dean Chang, head of the university’s new Academy for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, stress that being entrepreneurial is more about “a mind-set” than expecting every student to become a business person.
Loh called the model of a research university that doesn’t create anything practical a “20th-century construct.”
“It’s very different today,” Loh said of the changes to the U.S. and global economy. Students are “very concerned about making a living, and they’re competing on a worldwide basis for jobs.”
Anirban Basu, head of Sage Policy Group Inc., an economic and policy consulting firm in Baltimore, said universities are turning to entrepreneurship to boost their income. Licensing university-owned intellectual property can be lucrative, he said, and successful alumni might choose to donate to the place they feel contributed to their entrepreneurial knowledge.
“As the state’s flagship university, at least arguably it has a professional responsibility to the people of Maryland to create economic opportunities and to support innovation,” said Basu, who added that the university is a client of his firm. “Like many universities, the University of Maryland, College Park can’t rely on state support to the extent that it has in the past. It needs new sources of revenue.”
Students say they see a practical business focus across a range of fields. Samantha Zwerling, president of the university’s Student Government Association, said that in a required professional writing seminar she was asked to write a grant proposal, choosing to pitch a potential national conference that an environmental organization could host.
The university is “making sure Maryland students are not only able to get jobs but create them,” she said. “Everyone expects that they’ll need to change and adapt, but I think our generation is really good with that. … This is where we see the country moving … and this is where jobs are.”
A report by the U.S. Department of Commerce in October found that at least 450 colleges and universities nationwide had some kind of entrepreneurship program, including a patent-drafting clinic at the University of Illinois and a bachelor’s degree program in innovation at the University of Colorado.
(Next page: Including businesses)
- Extron AV Switching, Streaming, and Control Systems Aid Higher Learning at Idaho’s First Medical School - June 1, 2021
- Extron XTP, Streaming, and Control Systems Empower Point Park University’s Varsity Esports Program - June 1, 2021
- Extron NAV Series Delivers AVoIP Throughout Allied Health Veterans Hall at UNC Wilmington - June 1, 2021