A sceptical school of thought still holds that Irish universities, institutes and colleges mostly churn out automaton graduates who are good at passing exams but little else.
A new breed of third-level staff are doing their best to counter that notion. They lead the promotion of creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship among students.
“More and more, education is assessed on the basis of professional skills development,” said Kathryn Cormican, a lecturer in the college of engineering and informatics at NUI Galway, who champions the cause of innovation. “If reading and writing were currency in the past, creativity and innovation are the currencies of the 21st century.”
This relates not just to business students. These days, all students, indeed all staff, need to be able to think innovatively. “What I am doing at NUI Maynooth is trying to foster creative thinking and design thinking across all students,” said Damini Kumar, the director of design and creativity at the university and the EU ambassador for creativity and innovation. “This is not just for product designers. People need these skills for anything that requires problem solving. I am trying to foster innovation across all students and across every faculty including postgrads and staff.”
At Cork Institute of Technology (CIT), Kieran Moynihan has a similarly broad approach to his job as entrepreneur-in-residence. When he took on the role last year, he toured every part of the college, speaking to students in every year of every department, from first-years to PhD candidates.
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Given the economic climate, he has found he has to both reassure and inspire students. “They are incredibly sensitive to their prospects when they come out of college,” he said. “They see what is happening in the country and read the media every day. There is a real sense of anxiousness with them and they really appreciate you demystifying things for them. They really enjoy understanding about business in a practical way.”
The message is getting through to students that they need more than industry-specific knowledge to succeed, whatever their chosen career path, he says.
“What I see as the common denominator across students now is that they are all beginning to understand the importance of other skill sets beyond the primary thing they are studying. Even if they go to work in a multinational, they need a more rounded skill set. There is a better recognition of that now than there was in my time in college.”
Changing mindsets also entails getting students to understand how the material they have studied, and the knowledge gained, applies to the real world, says Cormican.
“I tell them, this is not just about looking at your shoes. Who is going to use this? How can I sell this? Look up and around you. Don’t focus on the functions and features of the product or the technology, but think about how this is going to solve a problem. How will this do a job better, faster, cheaper, smarter?”
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It is important to bring students out of their comfort zones and aim high in the process, she adds.
“We need to emulate the best of the best, such as the people in places like Stanford. It is not just about the product or the technology; it is about the process, how you take an idea and bring it out to market. We need to adopt a more multi-disciplinary process. Engineers need to know more about business, and business students need to see the science and technology perspective.
“We, as academics, have changed the way we look at the world. We have brought in a lot of project- and problem-based learning and associated assessment techniques,” she said.
“However, we have to be more creative, too, and set interesting challenges for students. We have to be smarter.”
Promoting creativity is not just about creating a warm, fuzzy atmosphere in a college, says Kumar. “Contrary to popular belief, creative thinking is not just about brainstorming and thinking of wild ideas, then doing nothing with them.
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“Creative and design thinking are actual structured processes that you can learn to generate ideas or solve problems. We always start with clearly defining a problem and then use different tools and techniques to solve it.”
Kumar uses techniques such as those devised by Edward de Bono, who is credited with inventing the term “lateral thinking”. Students tend to be wary at first, she says.
“When I did this with teacher-training students, they didn’t know why they would be learning creative thinking. But throughout the course, and as it finished, they absolutely got it.
“They found it inspirational and were happy to have tools and techniques they could use in anything. They even gave me examples of how they would use creative thinking in school when they were teaching their pupils.”
But across third level, the biggest push in terms of lateral thinking is behind the promotion of entrepreneurship in particular.
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Moynihan talks to CIT students about identifying business opportunities, developing products and services, differentiating new businesses, attracting funding and other support, and making sales.
All the while, he uses real-life examples and frequently brings speakers in from early-stage companies based in the on-campus Rubicon incubation centre.
“It is all about giving them confidence and getting them excited about the possibilities their own business can bring them — not just in a financial sense, but the sense of achievement it gives. They need to understand this is a very viable road for them.”
Across the third-level sector, there are plenty of competitions and programmes for lateral thinkers and would-be entrepreneurs.
At NUI Galway, for example, the students’ union is running its student enterprise awards, which have a top prize of €15,000, to be used as seed capital for a new business project; and the young entrepreneur programme run out of the Institute of Technology Tralee attracts hundreds of second- and third-level students annually.
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Each year, CIT runs an innovation competition, and Moynihan says outsiders would be “blown away” by the students’ capacity for novel thinking.