Many graduates have to search for a job when they leave university. Lucky graduates, especially those who choose the right courses, have jobs lined up for them. But an enterprising handful of students at Cida City Campus will spend their last year creating jobs for themselves.
Cida is planning an incubator for start-up businesses. "It's a natural progression for an entrepreneurial course," says Nicola Millson who is helping set up Cida Enterprises (CE).
"It will give fourth-year students real life experience in running their own businesses. And it will generate revenue for Cida, which will take a percentage of the equity to help the university become self-sustaining.
Millson spent six weeks at the London Business School (LBS) recently, "analysing their model". LBS has established a series of entrepreneurship centres, which focus on a range of business sectors.
"I went to see what we could use from their model to create an organisation to fund Cida and make it self-sustaining," says Millson. "We are creating an entrepreneurship speciality for the fourth year. We want to do three things. Firstly , where students have exceptional business plans, we hope to award students' venture capital and space to start their businesses.
"Secondly, we want to create Cida Enterprises. We aim to operate businesses that can tap into Cida's natural opportunities, for example, recruitment, distribution or market research. There are some obvious commercial opportunities that can help make it self-sustaining and at the same time give the students real-life experience.
"Thirdly, we want to place selected students into approved franchise businesses because a good franchise offers so much support to students."
Millson, who co-ordinates the third-year entrepreneurship course says: "This year, when the students' plans were ready, I assembled a panel of real venture capitalists and investors and I gave each group 10 minutes to do a sales pitch on their business ideas - something that's unheard of for students.
"It was a bit terrifying for the students, but it offered them a real life experience. They will be better prepared to face bank managers or potential funders in the future."
She is looking at partnerships with "people who are active in entrepreneurial ventures or have an entrepreneurial mind-set".
She needs their support. "We want experienced business people to sit on the year-end panels, to join the mentor programme, to offer their companies for consulting assignments and to mark business plans."
As part of Cida's vision to extend its impact beyond its doors, students are required to teach in their communities. Once students are certified in a particular course, they are provided with tailored content material and required to train their own communities and issue tests and certificates.
"In parallel with the entrepreneurship programme, we have recently piloted the Entrepreneurship Made Easy course and hope to implement it across SA over the next year," says Millson.
- If you want to guide or mentor a Cida student entrepreneur, please contact daniella@jaff.name
