On 17 September 2018, the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching (CILT) hosted an Entrepreneurship Development in Higher Education Programme (EDHE) themed: Inculcating an entrepreneurial culture among academics. The workshop aligned with the Department of Higher Education (DHET) and Training implementation plan for EDHE programme 2018-2020, which aims to support academics in instilling an entrepreneurial mindset within all students and graduates through the offering of relevant knowledge, and application of business principles to a specific discipline. In his address, Prof. David Ngidi said that this programme has three goals which are: Student entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship in academia and Entrepreneurial universities.

“They are in line with our CUT vision 2020. Although we cannot isolate the above three mentioned goals of the EDHE programme because they are interlinked but today, as part of implementing the EDHE programme, we specifically focus on the second goal, which is “Entrepreneurship in academia. The reason being that, if we are to encourage entrepreneurship within the university and among students, we need to start with academics whose role should be to facilitate it through their teaching.

He further said that the Teaching and Learning Plan 2014-2020 advocates for technological innovation as a stronghold for pursuit and stimulation of socio-economic development and entrepreneurship and encourages relevant teaching to ensure attainment of these attributes. Enabling strategies such as the sustainability framework, innovation and entrepreneurship education strategy, community engagement framework were developed to guide the implementation of these graduate attributes.

“The workshop is, therefore, aimed at intensifying awareness on entrepreneurship development in higher education, especially among academics. As affirmed in our entrepreneurship education strategy, we continue to transform our entrepreneurship education, in line with the university’s vision of becoming a robust agent for innovation and socio-economic development in the Free State, the Central region, and South Africa as a whole. While we have developed excellent structures that are meant to promote entrepreneurship and other related attributes, in order that we no longer produce employees but graduates who can create jobs through entrepreneurship, thereby becoming agents of social change, it is essential that we also influence the culture of entrepreneurship at CUT.

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1. Academics and students at the workshop on entrepreneurship education among staff and students. The workshop is intended to devise means of producing more innovators and entrepreneurs through teaching.