SEOUL, KOREA - In a keynote session on "youth start-up and job" in the Global HR Forum 2014 held on November 6, the presenters were in agreement that the best way to resolve the youth unemployment problem is business start-up and entrepreneurship. As if to reflect the difficult situation for young people to get a job, the conference room was filled with 600 audiences.
Dr. Feridun Hamdullahpur, president of the University of Waterloo, said, "In a situation where factories introduce more machines while service industries automate their operations with computers and the Internet, it is natural to see so many jobs are made redundant. The only way to increase employment in this situation is business start-up."
Citing a study by the E.M. Kauffman Foundation that for every job reduced in the existing firm will be replaced by three jobs created by the new firm, he said that new business items that the machine is unable to replace will revive the economy. Dr. Hamdullahpur continued, "At the University of Waterloo we encourage students to have entrepreneurial spirit by requiring hands-on experience. For example, they can take one semester of class-based courses, followed by four to eight months of field experience."
Dr. Ralph Eichler, president of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, said, "The share of students who opt for taking vocational school classes instead of advancing to college in Switzerland is more than 80 percent. Still, nobody thinks they are below the college-level students. A flexible system in which students can change their career path freely in the middle is contributing to create a social milieu in which failure is acceptable."
He also said, "Our ETH Zurich has begun stressing business start-up education since the late 1990s. Once a student comes up with a business idea, the university lends support to the student to commercialize the technology for one to two years instead of school work."
Article provided by The Korea Economic Daily
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