“University lectures are the enemy of entrepreneurship,” says Michael Fowle, an entrepreneur and enterprise fellow at Northumbria University. It seems an ironic claim, given that Fowle is himself launching an MSc in entrepreneurship at Newcastle Business School this month – but then this is no typical master’s course. The curriculum includes no lectures, or any academic teaching for that matter.
“Who would you rather rely on,” Fowle asks: “A student who has read 30 key marketing papers and written an essay or a student who used the papers to design and run their own marketing campaign?”
Enterprise courses with non-theoretical elements are popular among British universities, with more than 300 on offer in the UK. But Northumbria’s MSc is claimed to be the first entirely practical master’s in entrepreneurship in the UK, meaning any academic written work is “optional”. For a fee of £10,000, a class of around eight to 15 students will spend the year trying to launch their own startups to earn credits on the programme – and ideally some real-life revenue. The course includes a business accelerator for students to experiment with new business ideas under supervision from five entrepreneurship coaches.
Fowle insists on the term “coaches” rather than tutors, to focus on what he calls “action-learning”. The degree is assessed not through essays or examinations, but through weekly review sessions. He believes the lack of academic rigour will be reconciled with an intensive workload. “You will need to be completely immersed. You can’t have a hobby. You can’t have a spare-time job. It’s possible that you won’t be able to have friends,” he says.
Fowle describes his ideal student as someone with a business idea who has not studied a business course at university. He envisages them being recent graduates not too entrenched in their careers, for instance, or perhaps older parents whose children have left home. “We’ve found from the applicants that they wouldn’t get support from their families for a normal business startup because it’s too high-risk; whereas the MSc was considered to be less risky,” he says.
But given the £10,000 fee, the course can’t exactly be called risk-free. A university press release offers the chance “to run your own business, gain a master’s degree and pay back your tuition fees in one year” – but sceptics question whether this is realistic.
Sarat Pediredla, managing director of technology consultancy hedgehog lab, says: “It looks like the team on the course have some great credentials so I am optimistic that students will get some useful learnings, but I am still sceptical that they should pay £10,000 for this.”
Pediredla points out that there is free mentoring available to entrepreneurs elsewhere, “such as Entrepreneurs’ Forum in the north-east – and there is excellent support from accelerator programmes like Ignite, where entrepreneurs can get investment and coaching.”
Julia la Ronde, an entrepreneur who founded drinks company Sisserou, agrees. “Before embarking on any paid form of training,” she adds, “entrepreneurs should do their research and check whether there is suitable government-funded training or grants available in their region. In the past, organisations like Enterprising Women have run mentor and coaching programmes matching budding entrepreneurs with successful ones.”
This year, Fowle ran a 12-week trial run of the business accelerator programme – called Sparktank – which will form one of three modules on the MSc. One of its alumni is Sam Clegg, 27, who graduated from Northumbria University in 2014. Clegg had long wanted to become an entrepreneur, having previously taken several other business courses. “I’d tried to start a business in my spare time during weekends, and I took part in several free courses that would last a couple of hours a week,” he says. “But they really just felt like I was only playing business. I preferred the concentrated 12 weeks of the accelerator where you actually go out and talk to customers. It was the kick up the backside I probably needed.”
Clegg is now working on a startup – Festibl, an app that matches the user’s music tastes to festivals – which he devised on the course with a fellow student. But the idea didn’t come until after a few misfires: “No one in the group finished on the same idea that they started with. It’s a common misconception that you need a finalised idea or an inspiration before you can set up a business. You can’t be too set in your ways.”
Clegg’s trial group enrolled free of charge; but would he have been prepared to pay £10,000 for the full degree course? “Knowing what I do now, I honestly probably would. I think a lot of people have been let down by university in terms of having a good degree and not yet being prepared for work. I know people who have really struggled to find work despite getting firsts and 2:1s,” he says.
Yet the obvious questions arise: are universities really an entrepreneur’s natural habitat? Wouldn’t the ideal entrepreneurship student be, well, an entrepreneur already?
Fowle’s answer is that the “university environment” is particularly advantageous for those starting a business. “It is true that some kids are go-getters and some aren’t, but you can become more entrepreneurial through experience and teamwork.”
Over the years, Fowle has himself founded several early-stage health businesses and, as startups are wont to do, “most of them have fallen flat on their faces.” The hope for him is that this venture won’t go the same way. “We need to make sure that, while it’s innovative and wild, that we collect enough evidence of outcomes to justify giving the degree,” he says. “Only time will tell if it works.”
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