BALANCING EMPLOYMENT AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP REQUIREMENTS IN INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING EDUCATION

The purpose of higher learning is to equip students with the necessary skills and knowledge to support their respective professional careers. Ultimately, each career follows the employment or entrepreneurship path. The higher learning curriculum is generally more structured for the employment path, even though the global economy of the 21st century is fast becoming largely entrepreneurial. This work investigates the scope of entrepreneurship in the context of industrial engineering graduates. The aim is to develop a method to determine quantitatively the importance of focusing on entrepreneurial competence development in engineering students, and to propose a strategy to address the evident need for a greater emphasis on entrepreneurial competencies in graduate industrial engineers, based on market data. The approach is to analyse entrepreneurial projects as advertised by on-line freelance platforms, to determine the general characteristic skill-level requirements and perspectives on opportunity and remuneration. A strategy to enhance graduate entrepreneurial competency is also presented.