The principal of Dundee University has called for the three Es to take a more central role in the curriculum.
Professor Pete Downes has acknowledged greater emphasis on employability, enterprise and entrepreneurship has raised concerns about the potential for academic freedom to be undermined, but he said their chance of getting a job was a ”chief concern” of students.
He recently inaugurated a entrepreneurship prize and the university runs an enterprise gym that stages workshops to help students develop their commercial awareness.
A rapidly-growing internship programme last year saw 600 students gaining employment experience.
Professor Downes said: ”A key argument for investment in universities comes from the evidence that graduates don’t just fill available jobs.
”They are an engine for economic growth because, by and large, they also create many new jobs. But is it a step too far to place the three Es at the heart of the curriculum?
”Many of our graduates are already enterprising and entrepreneurial and I see no reason why we shouldn’t enhance their skills in this regard.
”This does not mean creating new modules in entrepreneurship, but more explicitly making the connection between graduate skills, whatever the discipline, and the world of work including the creation of jobs and businesses.”
The university’s draft, endorsed at a recent senate meeting, says the three Es should be ”threaded into the fabric” of academic course work.
However, Professor Downes said this had triggered a debate, with claims made that responsibility for the curriculum should lie solely with academic staff and that by specifying requirements the curriculum must fulfil, the strategy undermined academic freedom.
”I believe academic freedom to be a fundamental right for all academic staff, regardless of discipline. However, the interests of society have long influenced curriculum content in our universities because a university system that was insensitive to such needs would soon lose support.”