Haryana Higher Education Department will soon set up Entrepreneurship Development Clubs (EDCs) in all Colleges and Universities in the State to inculcate “Entrepreneurial Culture” amongst youth and equip them with skills to act as job creators instead of being job seekers in future.
A spokesman of the Department on Saturday said that Entrepreneurship Development Clubs would be set up within the existing placement centres in all the higher educational institutions in the State. This would be a part of the department’s drive to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship in the State. These clubs would also facilitate campus-industry linkage on the higher education Institutes of the State.
He said that the vision to set up EDCs would be to develop in-house institutional mechanisms in the Higher Education Institutes of the State to create entrepreneurial culture among the stakeholders and foster innovation and entrepreneurship amongst the students and the society at large.
These clubs will inculcate entrepreneurial culture and qualities amongst the stakeholders, sensitise innovation driven entrepreneurship scenario in the State, nurture the latent entrepreneurial talent, promote innovation and entrepreneurship on campus and develop awareness among its members of the attitudes, values, and skills of successful entrepreneurs around the globe.
The spokesman said that while Department of Higher Education would be the nodal agency for this scheme, the Vice Chancellors and Principals wouId be the implementing agencies at the institutional level. The scheme will be implemented in all Universities, Government, Government aided degree colleges of the State. These Clubs would be a student-run initiative that engages and inspires students to explore the many paths towards becoming an entrepreneur. Students willing to join the EDC will be enrolled as members.
It will promote and coordinate entrepreneurial activities in respective colleges and help the students to transform their ideas into enterprises along with their academic programme. To inspire the youngsters, the Department of Higher Education, would also conduct regular ideathons, wherein the best ideas would be given cash prizes, which can be used by the students as their initial financial support for their start-up journey.
Every EDC would have one faculty coordinator preferably from business studies or commerce, one Placement In Charge, four faculty members from various disciplines and five students which would be nominated by the Head of the Institutions.
The EDCs would develop and maintain a pool of domain specialists willing to serve as mentors, advisors and business counsellors for students. These mentors and business counselors shall be selected based upon their repute and potential to leverage the students’ commercialization potential. These will also submit quarterly report on key activities undertaken a quarter to head office.