Enterprise skills and training needs of postgraduate research students

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a survey of postgraduate research (PGRs) students studying at the University of Huddersfield, concentrating on entrepreneurial attributes and the importance of enterprise-related skills future career intentions. Design/methodology/approach – Electronic survey questions asked respondents to rate their confidence in a series of enterprise-related skills, and each skill's importance in their career development. Identification with attributes relating to independence, risk taking, self-efficacy, tolerance of ambiguity, and innovativeness were explored. Further questions probed the importance of enterprise skills development, research impact, and career aspirations including business start-up potential. Findings – Respondents identified with entrepreneurial attributes and were positive towards enterprise skills development. The majority felt that their research could have commercial impact, and over a third reported that starting a business appealed to them. Comparisons of importance and confidence ratings identified skills areas where confidence was relatively low and needed to be improved, where there is a large gap between confidence and importance, and where a skill was rated as having lower importance than is optimal from an institutional perspective. Interestingly, different groups of students considered “self-employment” compared with “business start-up” as a career option. Research limitations/implications – These single-institution results suggest that PGRs are more entrepreneurial than might be expected. Is the higher education (HE) sector underestimating the entrepreneurial potential of the PGR population, their appetite for engaging in enterprise, and their enterprise and commercialisation training needs? Originality/value – The results have relevance for the HE community in terms of understanding PGR entrepreneurial attributes, and training needs for enterprise and commercialisation of research output

Evaluating the state of enterprise training for post-graduate researchers in the UK

Purpose - This paper seeks to provide insight into the state of enterprise education and skills training at post-graduate level at UK higher education institutions (HEIs). Design/Methodology/Approach – Case study Approach. A case-study research strategy was used to address the lack of existing research on enterprise training for PGRs. The initial task was to identify those UK universities which provide enterprise and entrepreneurship training for their PGRs. Based on this desk exercise, 5 universities were selected according to the nature and structure of their training programmes ands geographical spread such that one university was included from Wales, Scotland, South of England, Midlands and North of England. The next stage of the research focused on gaining in-depth understanding of the enterprise training available to PRGs at selected universities through face-to-face semi-structured interviews with key personnel responsible for the design and management of PGR enterprise education programmes. The data collected was analysed using the Rugby Team Impact Framework to explore the training and development provision and structure, internal and external profile raising and awareness, staff and skills required, research-based practices, the reaction of participants, behaviour and outcomes, stakeholder engagement, and ongoing strategy Results. The study highlights the current best practices in enterprise education for PGRs. It identified key factors contributing to the success of selected programmes including the development of objectives, the modes and pedagogy of delivery, and the involvement of stakeholders. Implications. The results of the research enable universities across the UK to drive the development of a suite of learning opportunities tailored to the needs of the PGR population in order to overcome barriers to engagement and best promote entrepreneurial activity - both within employment and as new venture creation - as appropriate career options. Originality/Value. This paper contributes to the limited literature concerning the state of enterprise training for PGRs which provides a detail analysis of current provisions useful for benchmarking and planning purposes and which can be useful to researchers and enterprise education providers

Huddersfield Open Access Publishing final report

The Huddersfield Open Access Publishing (HOAP) Project aimed to develop a low cost sustainable journal publishing platform using EPrints software. The development of the HOAP platform has three main outcomes as part of the project. It has been used to convert the University journal, Teaching in Lifelong Learning, from its existing model of a print subscription journal to an open access e-journal. A specific front end has been created for the journal, with content being archived in the University Repository. As part of this work, there has been a re-write of the notes for contributors section and a move from copyright transfer to a licence to publish model. Membership of CrossRef and the Committee on Publishing Ethics (COPE) has been investigated and the journal is to be submitted to the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) in due course. The platform will also be used to launch a new title, Huddersfield Research Review, which will showcase the most significant research at the University of Huddersfield by including interviews with the authors of the most cited and/or most downloaded University articles in the University Repository together with an editorial overview by a senior researcher who will locate Huddersfield research within the broader national and international literature in the relevant fields and disciplines. An audit of the University’s journals has also been undertaken to assess the suitability of adding these to the platform in the future, this has proved extremely successful resulting in the addition of another title during the project but also the potential for starting two new Open Access titles in 2012. Finally, the project has developed a toolkit for other institutions to use, including details of new workflows, a licence to publish template and guidelines for new title proposals, which the project hopes can be adopted by the wider community

No evolution. No cognition

Although scholars in the natural and human sciences will generally disavow any belief in distinct material and immaterial substances contemporary debates are phrased largely in terms that would have been familiar to the Greek philosophers, and which still divide human characteristics into 'divine' or 'transcendent' attributes--in modern terminology the surrogate terms are rational, cognitive, discursive, autonomous and creative--and 'animal' or 'corporeal' attributes--the surrogates being emotional, instinctive, determined, immutable, and bounded. This essential dualism preserves the three key dichotomies of mind/body, cognition/emotion and nature/nurture found in many, if not most, discussions of human nature. Neuroevolutionary psychobiology's concern to divide the brain into determined affective components and unbounded plastic neocortex by employing such concepts as 'exaptations', 'spandrels', and 'emergence' resides firmly within this quasi-theological Western philosophical tradition. This dualistic approach provides no coherent foundation for the critique of evolutionary psychology

Evolutionary Developmental Psychopathology

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