This guest post has been kindly written for HEPI by Dr Paul Marshall, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Careers & Enterprise at the University of East London.
Within the mountain of detail underlying the recent Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF) results, was a remarkable statistic. In the first year of the pandemic, the number of new graduate businesses started up reached 4,528, an average of one every two hours. This was an increase of nearly 20 per cent over the previous academic year.
If one single statistic demonstrates the ambition of UK graduates, this is it.
Our own efforts at the University of East London (UEL) were recognised in the results, with an appearance in the top 20 per cent in metrics covering student start-ups. We are currently eighth in the UK for startups as measured by the Higher Education Business and Community Interaction survey.
This is not the culmination of our efforts but the first fruits of a strategy that puts enterprise front and centre, recognising the appetite among students to create their own futures, either as freelancers, consultants, or as entrepreneurs.
