Education of Future Language Workers: Supporting Students’ Startups as a Teaching Strategy

Abstract

The article discusses the role of student start-ups in general and their introduction into the academic curriculum as graduation projects in particular. The paper provides an overview and short history of the student start-up as a concept and the term, underlining, on the one hand, a contemporary demand for student entrepreneurship encouragement, their social capital built-up and University-industry collaboration but problematic ambiguity of their realization, on the other. The authors claim the innovations as it goes is most challenging for both teachers and students of non-business academic programs and requires a certain shift in teaching strategies as well as the curriculum. The paper dwells on the existing background of student start-ups in non-business fields and underlines that in such circumstances teaching and extracurricular activities become a major tool to promote the entrepreneurial intentions among the students. The authors claim the academic training can benefit from a suchlike approach and the transdisciplinary projects may serve as a practice-oriented cumulative ground for student start-ups. The paper illustrates how these projects can be implemented. The authors have stepped up their efforts towards introducing a student start-up to show how a certain student project can later launch them into business resulting in creating a new venture.