Lord Young of Graffham told a conference that higher education had to ¡°instil the very concept of enterprise¡± into young people.

¡°Every undergraduate during the course of their degree - and I know exactly how little people do during their undergraduate degree¡­should have a short course on setting up [their] own company,¡± he told the Student and Graduate Entrepreneurship in Colleges and Universities conference in London on 20 March.

¡°The world in which they [graduates] are going to go and inhabit and work in is going to be a self-employment world, it¡¯s going to be a small firms world,¡± he argued.

Graduates ¡°may have to be more self reliant¡­they have to embrace the concept of working for themselves¡±, and universities had to prepare them for this, he said.

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His comments come amid debate over the extent to which universities should prepare students for work.

Writing in Times Higher Education on 21 March, Steve Sarson, a senior lecturer in the department of history and classics at Swansea University, objected to having to teach students how to write a curriculum vitae as part of a module on historical research.

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¡°When academic study is entirely cast out of the classroom, what message does that send about its value?¡± he asked.

But Lord Young emphasised that he did not mean to ¡°denigrate¡± the value of higher education and that teaching students to start companies should be an ¡°addition¡± to, rather than a replacement of, their course content.

He also stressed that the courses would be optional, although ¡°we should encourage as many people to take it [as possible]¡±.

Asked whether the government should give universities extra money to carry out such courses, he said: ¡°I don¡¯t think the funding [would be] that much, actually, as we¡¯re talking about three or four lectures.¡±

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Lord Young was re-appointed as an advisor for enterprise in October 2011 after quitting the role in 2010. He stepped down after being criticised for claiming that people in the UK ¡°have never had it so good ever since this recession ¡ª this so-called recession ¡ª started¡±.

david.matthews@tsleducation.com