Educator's perspective: development of employability competences in venture creation

Abstract

<p>During the last 25 years, much lip service has been paid to competences for employability and how those can be enhanced in different levels of education. Venture creation programs (VCP) often take a narrow focus on educating for self-employment and firm founding, however, such a focus is not necessarily a beneficial option for all students. At the same time, in contrast to traditional higher education courses, venture creation courses tend to focus not only on subject specific knowledge, but also on more generic competences. Hence, could VCPs function also as a vessel for developing employability competences? The purpose of this study is to hear the voices of educators on development of employability competencies within a venture creation programme. The empirical focus is the Junior Achievement Company program that was offered in upper secondary schools and higher education. The duration of the program is 8-9 months. During the program, students form diverse teams and each team establishes a student company. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten educators from higher education and seven educators from upper secondary schools. Results indicated that educators see that particularly self-directedness, team/group work, courage and communication/interaction competencies can be enhanced though the venture creation program. Interestingly, these four competences were the same among upper secondary and higher education educators. Such elements of the learning environment are not easily found in a traditional, academic settings. Venture creation programs may promote competences for employability by overcoming some of the structural barriers inherent to academic education such as subject-orientation and short teaching periods.<br></p>