Enterprise Education: a new social ethic for higher education?^[1]

ABSTRACT Higher education institutions were invited in 1988 to bid for substantial grants to encourage the development of curricula that would produce the ‘enterprise graduate’. This paper discusses the Enterprise in Higher Education Initiative with reference to six case studies of courses with very close links with their respective employment sectors. The paper tentatively suggests the following conclusions: (a) that meeting Industry's demands can lead to the opposite of enterprise education, i.e. conservative credentialism; (b) that the lack of a satisfactory national policy on training and the attempt to ‘push down’ training to courses has an ‘opportunity cost’ which could lead to less enterprising graduates; (c) that enterprise education should be concerned with the needs (in a broad and general way) as opposed to the demands of industry.