International Entrepreneurs: the Sheffield way
According to a Times Higher Education article from November 2014: only 42% of International students want to start a business. Out of the 42% only 33% or 14% of the total want to do it in the UK. The survey was done by the National Union of Students in collaboration with The Entrepreneurs Network and underlines a problematic attitude towards the opportunities and educational advancement we offer to our International students.
Another worrying statistic is that nearly half of the respondents (43%) were not sure whether their institution is certified to endorse them for a Tier 1 Entrepreneurship visa, despite ‘101 of the 163 UK universities being certified by the Home Office’, which raises the question of whether our institutions do not want to provide International students equal access to this graduate route or do not know how.
Reading these statistics, on top of my experience as an intern at The University of Sheffield Enterprise Zone, have made me realise the necessity of having in place an educational programme that would help our International students understand what skills they need to become entrepreneurs as well as giving them the opportunity to understand the legal implications and process for applying for the Tier 1 Visa.
Therefore, when I became International Students’ Officer, I have set under my goal of ‘Fostering empowerment through education’, an objective that regarded helping International students become more entrepreneurial through educational classes and, one of my former colleagues at USE, Rishabh Kumar, has intensively helped me achieve this goal. The end product is two programmes of 5 weekly workshops: Aspiring Entrepreneurs (for 1st and 2nd years) and Graduate Entrepreneurs (for final years).
Graduate Entrepreneurs has started today, 11 of October, the same day the UK Government released a statement that EU funding will be secured for the 2017–2018 academic year, so I will note it in my calendar as a lucky day! Aspiring Entrepreneurs starts tomorrow. Rishabh is coordinating both projects as a current USE intern and I am absolutely proud of his work and what he managed to achieve as I am proud of my ability to help and enable a theoretical objective to become reality. When asked what motivated him to start the project, Rishabh had told me: “ I got inspired to do this project because I wasn’t able to do start my own enterprise due to the visa restrictions, but it didn’t stop me to help international student to start theirs.”
The fact that The University of Sheffield (especially International Student Support who have indeed offered real support to the programme) and Sheffield Students’ Union are pioneers in leading on a project that actually gives International students access to the knowledge they need in order to apply for the Tier 1 visa speaks volumes.
Of course, there is so much more to work on, there are subliminal problems that need to be addressed. I have noticed today, only to give a few examples, that most of the students registered and attending were male rather than female, that the legalities imply a competition as only 10 visas can be granted by the University, that the language around entrepreneurship is not the most accessible. Hence, we need to tackle these existent inequalities of gender imbalance, limited access to the market and language barriers. However, today Sheffield made its first step, which is actually a huge step, so why wouldn’t all universities follow?
This is a way to actually prove that #WeAreInternational.
More details on International Entrepreneurs:
https://www.facebook.com/events/1587932908169764/
NUS research: http://tenentrepreneurs.org/research/made-in-the-uk-unlocking-the-door-to-international-entrepreneurs/
UK Government press release: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/funding-support-for-eu-students
