ENTREPRENEURSHIP VALUE OF INDUSTRY SPECIFIC TRAINING INTEGRATION INTO COMPUTER SCIENCE CURRICULUM

The modern information-age industries are pressured by competition from rivals and other forces. This has made recruitment of new personnel to adapt ways by ensuring that effective role players are fielded to manage performance. There are moves towards recruiting self-starters and experienced staff in order to keep the momentum of satisfactory performance. In an attempt to develop experience among staff, companies recruit interns to develop human resources. The more attractive recruits are those who already know the work requirements. Internships do not provide all the necessary exposure, and they require company’s financial resources. To offset such pressures, universities should develop employable graduates. However, beyond this, they should produce entrepreneurial graduates, who can start and successfully manage their own businesses. Therefore, incorporating work-related content and entrepreneurship into the academic course content might provide an edge for to the new student recruits coming out of the tertiary education system. However, such an incorporation necessitates a mind shift. Among other value additions to modern business is computer science (CS). Computer Science Curriculum (CSC) provides greater opportunities in a number of business start-ups and incubation. Integration of entrepreneurship concepts and skills into CSC can complement academic CS content leading to the advancement of business creation. Therefore, curricula should include entrepreneurship concepts. On the other hand, start-up incubators have also redefined how CSC should be implemented. A self-paced online course through the use of industry-specific training (IST) on entrepreneurship has been offered to the final year CS students alongside other initiatives for students to peach up business ideas. This initiative would be evaluated and form the bases of integration of such initiatives in CSC. This paper presents views on and experiences of the incorporation of, entrepreneurship and management concepts in the CSC at Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University (SMU) with the sole purpose of value-add to business.