Giving Compass' Take:

· Writing for EdSurge, Gary A. Bolles talks about the future of  higher education and whether entrepreneur programs could potentially replace the traditional college route if higher education is unable to adapt. 

· What do colleges and universities need to evolve with the changing workforce?

· Here's how entrepreneurship opens pathways for student leaders. 

If I gave you a magic wand, and said you could redesign a college from scratch, what must your students learn?

I argue that you need to help build problem-solvers who are adaptive, creative and entrepreneurial in their thinking.

It turns out you can find programs on today’s campuses that already teach these things: entrepreneurship programs. I believe such programs not only the future of teaching the kind of agency that everyone will need, they may hold some of the keys to the future of higher education itself.

Where did this insight come from? I recently spent an afternoon at the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center, in San Francisco, in a program co-chaired by Lehigh University, meeting with leaders of entrepreneur programs from around the world, many of them based at colleges. Attendees included representatives from Hong Kong, India, Canada, Germany and the U.S.

The guided discussion eventually turned to the daunting challenges so many colleges face in trying to adapt to a rapidly-changing world. Tuition is skyrocketing. Tenure is a tax on innovation, protecting Sanskrit professors so they can teach from the $153 book they wrote 40 years ago. (That’s the national average per course for textbooks.) Alumni want a campus to look exactly like it did when they graduated (except for the shiny new football stadium they just funded). Accrediting agencies want concrete poured on curriculum for one or two years before it can be changed. State colleges are often compensated based simply on attendance, giving no incentive for outcomes.

Read the full article about entrepreneur programs by Gary A. Bolles at EdSurge.