ABSTRACT
‘Graduate Enterprise’ was conceived by Tom Cannon in 1982 in response to government concerns in the UK about high graduate unemployment. Graduate Enterprise was initiated at the University of Stirling in 1982 at the time of the launch of the Scottish Enterprise Foundation. The Graduate Enterprise Programme became a policy instrument in the UK, during the eighties, to encourage new businesses in the local economy. The Graduate Enterprise Programme exposes students to the idea that running a business can provide a challenging and rewarding career. Graduate Enterprise has also made little impact on addressing environmental barriers to enterprise throughout the higher education system, though perhaps it could be viewed as too ambitious to expect a single initiative to be capable of achieving this. The Graduate Enterprise Programme was an innovative and radical approach to training and support for the development of entrepreneurship and small business education in the UK.
