Blog by Matt Dowling, Founder of the Freelancer Club
“It’s in your nature to destroy yourselves.” Some sunny words from the Terminator there as spoken in T2: Judgment Day.
Sticking with the doom and gloom, are you currently working for one of the many universities experiencing cuts? Great. Read on.
Strange times. We find ourselves in the peculiar position of slashing the very institutions that might guide us through the economic fog ahead. You wouldn’t fire the navigator halfway across the Atlantic because you’ve decided maps are an unnecessary luxury, would you?. Of course not. You’d give them an iPhone and access to the Citymapper app.
Across Britain’s campuses, the air is thick with the scent of ministerial red pens and vice-chancellors performing financial gymnastics in an attempt to stay afloat. If you’ve flicked through the FT in the past few days, you’ll have read articles by Amy Borrett and Glen O’Hara entitled ‘UK universities face rising risk of bankruptcy, says regulator’ and ‘The UK’s academic recession is in full swing’ respectively.
It’s grim reading. And yet, there’s a rich irony of gutting universities, and in particular Enterprise Departments, at a time when we’re hurtling towards an unknowable economic landscape without a captain to steer the ship. Automation, artificial intelligence, climate upheaval – a perfect storm of disruption that requires a careful and experienced hand on the tiller to guide through the next generation.
This, like all good entrepreneurs, is where I see an opportunity.
What’s emerging from the smoking ruins of traditional education is something rather interesting: a recognition that the entrepreneurs of the future (and present) require a specific set of skills – not just technical abilities but skills to future-proof their careers.
The realisation hit about two years ago, after I was approached by an Enterprise Manager following what I thought was a pretty solid presentation on freelancing in higher education. Their question — or rather, my inadequate answer — completely changed how and what we teach aspiring freelancers.
“Thanks for the talk – it was great, BUT, how am I supposed to offer advice to student freelancers when the working world is changing so rapidly that they can’t keep up, let alone me!” My response was simple and to the point – I had a train to catch, after all. “An understanding of the business essentials is impervious to change. They’ll be fine.”
On the journey back to London, that answer gnawed at me. Bear in mind, ChatGPT was all of 6 months old and I felt there was too much talk about the end of days in the air. Regardless, it sparked self-reflection and made me question our approach. Is what we’re teaching and how we’re teaching it going to future-proof the next generation of freelancers? And so began our opus of exploration.
The results were three fold. Firstly, we were going to double down on the mindset sessions we were offering to complement the business training. Secondly, we need a way to teach core skills that are going to be essential for graduates to navigate the changes taking place. Third, our teacher-led, structured lessons — with explicit instruction and clear objectives — had to change if students were to apply these skills in any environment. We landed on experiential learning that was student-centred and focused on creating real-world scenarios with plenty of reflection and discussion. We had to crack how to teach core skills.
From the inquiry came a methodology we dubbed ‘the sandpit approach’. Rather than handing students rigid templates and business plans that may be obsolete in an world enveloped by AI Agents, we need to equip them with something far more valuable: the ability to play, experiment, and adapt in an ever-shifting landscape.
This isn’t about teaching someone how to fill out a tax return (though that is included in our finance module), it’s about cultivating a mindset that’s comfortable with uncertainty, that can pivot on a dime, and that understands business not as a fixed set of rules but as a constantly evolving game.
Take our freelancers, those brave souls who’ve chosen to navigate the choppy waters of self-employment without the protections of corporate infrastructure. They’re not just growing in numbers – they’re becoming the canaries in our economic coal mine, the earliest adopters of whatever fresh hellscape the gig economy has cooked up this week.
Traditional business education sends these pioneers into battle armed with rigid business plans and spreadsheets, meanwhile, the actual skills they need – adaptability, relationship building, communication – are treated as afterthoughts.
But these supposedly ‘soft’ skills are precisely what separates the survivors from the casualties in our brave new world. The ability to pivot when your industry implodes overnight. The relationship skills to build a network that functions as your safety net. The communication prowess to explain what you do to people who still think the internet is a series of tubes. One university Enterprise Director I spoke to – currently watching his budget being trimmed – put it rather well: “We’re not teaching students to follow recipes anymore. We’re teaching them to be chefs.” French kiss, mon amie.
Those universities who place their trust in our services are living proof. Our new approach allows students to test ideas, fail safely, and learn through experience rather than textbooks. It’s business education as experimental laboratory rather than production line. And critically, it recognises that in a world where AI can now write your business plan, complete your tax return, and arrange your calendar more effectively than you can, the uniquely human skills become the only real competitive advantage.
The new programmes are producing higher engagement and completion rates, showing an uptick in referrals from the students and early results suggest an increase in graduate outcomes.
So, where’s the big opportunity?
In this writer’s humble opinion, as traditional employment becomes increasingly precarious, entrepreneurship isn’t just an option for the ambitious few – it’s becoming a necessary survival skill for many. The ability to create your own economic opportunities, to navigate uncertainty, to build something from nothing – these are the skills that will separate those who thrive from those who merely survive in our brave new world.
And who is going to take control of this narrative and prepare the next generation? I believe that responsibility should fall to the fine folks in Enterprise. Those who know entrepreneurship inside and out. The problem-solvers, creatives and communicators who practice what they preach.
To Mr. Terminator, I say: no, we will not destroy ourselves. We will adapt and survive, as we have for millennia — and when we look back, it will be the innovators, the optimists, and the educators we have to thank.
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Freelancer Club partners with universities to deliver tailored programmes and expert consultation, while also working with the government to shape policies that protect and empower the self-employed. If your institution is ready to lead the way in freelance support, let’s talk.