Six key basics of entrepreneurial university

There are six key elements of entrepreneurial university, according to Professor Dares’ Ramjugernath, pro vice-chancellor of the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa - good leadership and management incentives for capacity, entrepreneurship teaching and learning, a culture of entrepreneurship, partnerships with interested countries and internationalization.

Innovation and entrepreneurship development and nation-building is what universities really had to be done, said pro-vice chancellor for innovation, commercialization and entrepreneurship.

"But universities are so driven by formulas subsidies are so driven by the world rankings, so drive as the number one or number two in the country in terms of research, that they have lost perspective on what it means to be a university and what it means to build a nation. "

Ramjugernath delivered a keynote speech at the Eighth Annual International Conference of the African Technology Network South 2015 on "training in entrepreneurship for economic renewal", held in the Science Park of the Vaal University of Technology 19 to 21 October.

Dizzying pace of change

It uses a Smartphone to describe the dizzying pace of change. Though he was taken to 15,000 years for people to go to move on all fours, to sit in front of the computer, it took only 30 years to go from there to walk around with a mobile device.

"There is more computing power in their hands today than NASA scientists have had when they put a man on the moon."

Technology and innovation were allowing today's rapid evolution, and universities are the engines of innovation. "As soon as we realize that we must also realize that we need to develop. As universities can not stand the way they have been doing."

Hundreds of years ago, universities are about providing academic training for the privileged elite. Today they are about training people for the workforce.

"But we have lost the plot. How many graduates we produce are fit for purpose workforce? We have gone too far down the line where we measure the success of the University of enrollment and graduates. We are not too worried quality, because then our subsidies will go down. "

Employers are "extremely worried" about the quality of university graduates produced, and whether they are what is needed in national and global scale, he said. Employers were forced to invest "huge sums of money" and the duration of training graduates.

Universities also do not respond adequately to evolving knowledge economy. They had to change curricula and approaches to address national and global challenges, and need to become more entrepreneurial.

Ramjugernath proposed six key elements of entrepreneurial university.