The Placement Officers & Tutors' Forum

[shr]

This year two students in the Computing Laboratory have been given permission to start their own business instead of securing a 12-month placement with an employer. They are currently self-funding but for the future it would be useful to know if ASET colleagues have had any experience of this sort of situation and whether this approach can attract funding.

Any views, ideas or thoughts would be much appreciated.

Many thanks

Sarah Ward
Industrial Placement Co-ordinator
Computing Laboratory
University of Kent

[keith]

Hi Sarah,

There is a similar scheme operating at Nottingham Trent – please follow this URL to read about the SPEED (Student Placements for Entrepreneurial Education) project - http://businesshive.ntu.ac.uk/activities.asp

[drjohn]

I find this exciting and encouraging; it brings together what is often called Employability and Enterprise, and they aren't really mutually exclusive.

The only direct example I can give wasn't quite this - the student had already founded his own company, built it up, and recently sold it, but the new owners wanted a year's handover. So we agreed that the student's placement year could be spent handing his own company over to the new owners, a rich experience of many aspects of business.
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Dr John J Wilson
Lancashire Business School
University of Central Lancs
Preston