Producing Social Entrepreneurs Through Education

As more and more academic programs on social entrepreneurship are being introduced in schools, it's about time to consider some future implications.

The curriculum focus can be in any of these 3 interlinked tracks: research, enterprise and cross-acedemic disciplines to fill talent gaps. The last track was recently highlighted in Dowser's interview on NYU's program in social entrepreneurship, stressing that the curriculum should be interlinked with other academic disciplines in order to develop diverse talents to help building the infrastructure for the field. It's important to consider all 3 tracks beyond the currently popular and enterprise-driven MBA programs on social entrepreneurship.

The biggest misconception that we'll need to avoid is that we have to go to schools to become social entrepreneurs/ social change agents. Or even worse, you need to attend top academic institutions to excel in the field. In recent NYTimes discussion, Nick Temple warned about restricting the field to university students and making it a career track. I'm in the consensus that we should never paint an exclusive image over it, and I don't think we should begin competitive labeling of Harvard/ Stanford social entrepreneurs, etc (to a lesser degree, we do already).

While they may be better equiped with expertise and resources but unless there's better evidence and maturity in assessing academic programs on social entrepreneurship, I find it misleading to imply which schools produce 'better' social entrepreneurs and claim credits for their achievement. We should avoid narrow comparison, it's obvious to say there are social change agents who don't study social entrepreneurship, there are also entrepreneurs who live intimately in poor communities and create social transformation that they care less to fathom intellectually. There's also another approach (adopted by Educate!) that believes social change agents should be created from within poor communities. Established academic institution is just one of those avenues to produce these social change agents.

Is Impact Investment Turning Into An Elite Field?

We have debated before that social entrepreneurship may give the misleading impression that it's an elite field in the West, current development in impact investment has actually started to resemble more like it. Impact investors from the West seem to be in the ideal position to lead the field with top investment expertise, financial backing and the ability to form extensive network to develop impact investmet market. It has no doubt attracted a large elite group of western investors, bankers, consultants and intellectuals who now play the role of social change agents, with exclusive networking events and forums specifically designed for them to discuss about using for-profit investment to tackle social issues while earning a return.

Indeed, they are the key players but it's really not about who's leading impact investment but the important question is what's actually the right direction to advance the field? Is impact investment supposed to be so exclusive even if it concerns with alleviating poverty in remote regions globally? Along the way, will it contradict the bottom-up approach that we always advocate? Organization like SOCAP has started to make an effort to make impact investment forum more social enterprise-centric but I believe we should not ignore the effort to develop ongoing dialogue with poor communities on the ground who we're supposed to serve. It should complement our call for rigorous standard in post-social impact reporting to understand how impact investment really works.

Globalization Malaysia: On Board Teach For Malaysia

The government has always stressed the need of education reform to close knowledge gap and reduce unskilled workforce, so it's no surprise that the recent launch of Teach For Malaysia (TFM) has been given high hope to tackle educational inequity in this country. It's hard to make any assessment at its current conceptual stage, while we can be optimistic and encouraged by the pioneering success of Teach For America but there are also plenty reasons to beware that replication of education reform program is never straight forward, there are few critical aspects that demand greater attention under our unique circumstances.

A government program or social enterprise?

TFM is backed by government investment arm along with heavy involvement from Education Ministry, so it's unknown of who's really in charge of the program. TFM also doesn't resemble a social enterprise pilot, backed by extensive government resources with meticulous planning in place, the team decides to take over 18 months to take the concept to the ground by 2012. The ownership issue is important because what really matters is that the TFM team should retain leadership and flexibility to experiment teaching instructions, content delivery and classroom experience. I seriously doubt the program effectiveness in achieving its original goals if the focus is to primarily fit top graduates to follow existing teaching instructions already dictated by the Education Ministry.

Promises and potential aside, it's really about tracking long-term transformation

We shouldn't get carried away by the excitement of recruiting top graduates in teaching. We don't know how they will perform as teachers, 8 weeks of intensive training for new graduates is not a realistic indicator of their readiness to teach in the toughest schools for the first time. We need to get the priority right, the most important goal is not to recruit top graduates and retain them for 2 years but to transform underperforming schools and to encourage promising fellows to follow civil service path. It takes a lot more transparency, accountability and solid performance measurement culture to see the program through. It's nothing more than basic expectation that we should see TFM be open about sharing what works and what doesn't, adopt rigorous standard in tracking performance and long-term social impact.