Policy background – the Graduate Enterprise Programme

The Graduate Enterprise Programme (GEP) was launched at Stirling University in 1983, in response to UK Government concerns over high graduate unemployment (Brown, 1989). The view was that UK graduates were less enterprising than those in the USA and Japan, fewer UK graduates were starting their own business (Brown, 1989; Brown and Burnett, 1990). In initiating the Graduate Enterprise Programme it became recognised that graduates rather than non graduates were more likely to have skills required for the formation of firms within knowledge based industries. Scott (1988a) argues the long term supply of well educated and well qualified entrepreneurs is essential to a strong modern economy. A key target population is young people (Scott, 1988b). Vesper (1982) has pointed out, the most suc-cessful businesses tend to be those that combine education and experience. Watkins and Watkins (1984) reported that the average age of inpiduals starting a business is in the mid thirties. However recent findings in the USA (Reynolds, 1997) suggests that public policies orientated toward enhancing the number of new firms may be most effective if directed towards young people (between the ages of 24 and 35 years). Although graduates have recently acquired skills and knowledge which may be technical and specialist, they may lack relevant business experience, skills, confidence and finance (McAlpine et al., 1989; Rosa and McAlpine, 1991). This results in young people and graduates, often being perceived as high risk by potential backers.

In setting up the Graduate Enterprise Programme the dominant constraints to enterprise were perceived to be institutional and cultural, where career orientations and institutions that influenced career choice were biased against entrepreneurial careers options (Cannon, 1983). Graduates have traditionally been expected to pursue careers in prestigious large companies and the profes-sions. Teaching materials and case studies tended to be based on large company experi-ence and models, there was little experience of small business (Gibb et al., 1984; Scott, 1986).

Gibb (1987) argues that many of the values and structures in university education may be the antithesis of entrepreneurship. Further, a career in stable long term employment is the favoured career path of nearly all graduates (Rosa and McAlpine, 1991; Rosa, 1994).

GEP was designed to weaken these cultural and institutional barriers and to attract a larger proportion of graduates into wealth creating businesses and to absorb some graduate unemployment. GEP became a national UK programme funded by the Training Agency (Employment Department) run by ten universities and regional centres. It sought to address the challenge of encour-aging enterprise in universities both estab-lishing a supportive environment and by assisting specific start ups.

As a national programme the aims of GEP were (White, 1990)

1 to identify graduates who are willing and able to run a small business;

2 to contribute towards promoting the proportion of graduates entering self employment or setting up a small business in Great Britain;

3 to contribute towards raising awareness of enterprise among students and teaching staff in institutions of higher education.

From 1984 to 1990 GEP operated more or less as the original model with some fine tuning. Each centre co-ordinated and provided two phases of GEP. Phase I resulted annually with around 400 students in Scotland (3-4000 in the UK) attending awareness raising briefing seminars, and 120 students in Scotland (1,000 in the UK) attending two day business work-shops. In Phase II, they competed for a lim-ited number of training places (20-40 in Scotland, 250 UK wide) available on the (residential) start up course (Brown, 1990). Throughout each phase entrepreneurial skills are developed using learning styles and environment advocated by Gibb (1987). The process is learning by doing, problem solving, grasping opportunities and holistic approaches. Trainers take on the role of facilitators, interactive classroom style is used, developing peer group exchanges and co operative interaction. Inputs are made