When you think about it, institutions that produce the best people might have an unfair dealflow advantage. Fun idea. Make it compulsory for African universities to invest between ten to fourty percent of total tuition in alumni who incorporate ventures within two years of graduation. Invest for equity, not a grant, I feel obliged to point out, lol. Would that have any impact on the way our universities are run, and their priorities?
Schools becoming incubators/accelerators. Accelerators becoming schools.
Y Combinator <----> Stanford/GSB.
Interesting days ahead.
The current state of most African Universities is pitiful as they are, like everything else on the continent, poorly run. It will require a disproportionate amount of time and energy to convince those that run them that this is actually a viable way of achieving sustainability (Instead of just relying on government, grants et al).
Also, universities like Yale have ridiculously large endowment funds.(Yale has an eye-watering $25.6 billion). Most of which is usually from alumni so it’s only fair that this money goes back to new alumni.
That said, this would be brilliant. Both for the University and Alumni. I’ve actually been looking up African universities that have incubators in their business schools to see if any is doing anything like this and didn’t find any.
Student: Sir, i have a startup idea that will generate millions
University VC (Ibadan UNI): Oh yea, so what do you need ?
Student: Sir, if i can get 50k$, we will def generate millions
Uni VC: have you paid your tuition fee ?
Student: sir, no sir
Uni VC: is so kay, go and pay your uni fee and lets talk about it afterwards
I think Covenant University might head in this direction someday.
That’s definitely interesting. I graduated from UNILAG, took a course on Entrepreneurship. Looking back one word that comes to mind to summarise the whole concept of the course is ‘brain-dead’. The first thing is to overhaul the Nigerian university system. A lot of the lecturers are half-baked. No wonder the graduates… ah, never mind.
A lot of things need to change before Nigerian universities can be like Yale.
Notice that some foreign schools do not pick academics as presidents, they opt for business people because they see the school as a venture.
That’s the kind of thinking we need in Africa. Our VCs should be venture capitalists.
Covenant University and AUN, Yola