5 cool start up ideas for college students

College is a cool playground to implement your start up ideas. This will also be encouraged by the management. To start a business at college you need to identify a niche market, where you can sell a product or service. Once you identify the market, make a list of resources you require. Form a team with your seniors, peers or juniors. You could involve one of your professors as a mentor. Your customers could be students, tutors, management or parents.

• IDEA 1: Stationery store – Start a stationery store at subsidized rates for colleges. Your college could be your first customer. Colleges require basic stationery items like pens, markers, chalk, notepads, papers and so on. Apart from that some electronic items like headphones, mouse, usb sticks could be added to your product catalogue for sale.

• IDEA 2: Virtual learning – Colleges are hubs for learning. To develop a ecosystem to educate each other is always a challenge. Create a virtual learning support system for your college and involve other colleges eventually. Manage your college community and engage with other colleges to build an interactive and supportive ecosystem.

• IDEA 3: Personal tutoring – Few students at college require personal attention which not be possible in a classroom. Professors and lecturers may not be accessible all the time for students. If you are good at a subject you can capitalize this opportunity. If you are a smart kid, help your peers and tutor them one-on-one. You could charge a nominal fee for spending your time with focused attention on the student.

• IDEA 4: Sports education – Though college is centered on academic learning, sports will definitely be a part of the curriculum. Cricket, hockey, basketball or any other sport that rules your college could be a great source of income. Conduct innovative games and introduce new game methodologies for students to enjoy sports and apply them during tournaments. Coach your juniors and peers in college sports. Bring in seniors as sport mentors.

• IDEA 5: Notes on my back: T-shirts are a common wear among youth. T-shirts with academic notes could be your unique selling proposition (USP). This will inculcate easy learning among students. Your t-shirt will have a new piece of information for your friends to learn and you will have other t-shirts to learn from. This could be a good learning methodology. You can sell to other colleges by customizing their logo on it.

Does a COLLEGE DEGREE define me?

Before we elaborate on this topic to understand whether or not a college degree can define a person, let us understand the purpose of both ‘a college‘ and ‘a degree‘.

A college as an educational institution has been established to impart specialized knowledge and skills and to educate the students in a holistically, to excel in a stream of study. A degree is further used to certify the level of skill sets and knowledge a student has acquired during the course duration in a college. The question to be answered here is, ” does the purpose to study in a college and acquire a degree, sustain even today?”.

Candidates who are prospective employees in an industry are evaluated by the degree they carry on paper and not what the person is really capable of. To beat this inefficient evaluation method, recruiters are constantly on an innovation spree trying to realize ‘THE CANDIDATE’ for their company.

Here is how the evolution took place.

• Employment Exchange
• Newspaper ads – Interview – Placement
• Referrals – Certificationscreening – Interview – Placement
• Online recruitment portal screening – Recruitment drives – Interview – Placement
• Social media recruitment screening – Interview – Placement
• Online & Offline Networking – Engaging with potential candidates – Being proactive for screening – Inviting candidates (Interview) – Placement

We can also see a parallel trend evolving which is – catching them young. Recruitment firms are now in a neck tight competition to engage with students and strike a relationship for a long term association. In India this trend is interestingly upside-down. We all know the potential is at the Bottom of the Pyramid but industry and institutions, who are pretty much the organized sector, are  not attempting to reach the potential from bottom. Catch them younger to beat the heat.

Why is this not happening?

This is not happening because the labour force at the bottom are large, huge in magnitude and number. This is impeding efforts to reach and make them a part of the organized sector. What is the way to make it happen? The answer to it is, ” COLLABORATION OF INDUSTRY, GOVERNMENT AND ABODES OF EDUCATION FOR SKILL ENHANCEMENT AND ATTITUDINAL SHIFTS”

When such a congregation is possible with smart execution, India will deliver anything and everything with finesse and perfection and build a new age.

Does a College Degree define me?

The answer to this questions still remains abstract. After engaging with the thoughts above, a person might be influenced to say ” A college degree does not define me.” It definitely can’t define or judge a person, but it should be considered as a valuable and authentic instrument to understand the potential of a candidate. Again, people who use a College Degree as the only instrument to evaluate will encounter fallacies in their judgement. It could be used as one of the parameters to understand the abilities and anticipate potential of a candidate.

For students who are scrambling to get a degree may find this thought process useful.

Related articles

• Stop Requiring College Degrees (blogs.hbr.org)
• College Degree Required. But Why? (inc.com)

Alumni Power

Should universities utilize alumni more for career development for current students? Alumni is a great resource to be used to connect with the students of a college. The students who have passed out of college, step on their journey of discovery while settling in different careers.

How can Alumni be used for the benefit of students?

Case study: Some of the students from alumni would be able to help by sharing the ongoing industry stories and provide a great bank of case studies.

Industry exposure: Colleges can build tie-ups with the companies in which alumni are associated with. Students could be provided first hand experience of the pertinent industry updates and trends.

Guest Lectures: Colleges scramble for speakers. Alumni settled in good jobs could be invited as  speakers for guest lectures and college events.

Internships: Access to companies where alumni is placed is easier versus a new company. Such access could be used to generate more fruitful and well designed internships.

Mentoring: As mentioned earlier alumni could be a capable source to provide industry exposure. Hence, some of the alumni could be recruited for an ongoing programme to mentor students on projects, subjects or any other industry related assignments.

Placements: With a strong industry network it becomes achievable for colleges to place students in good companies.

Related articles

• Is internship earning or learning? (hobbycollegecareer.wordpress.com)

How to manage my time? Time management for students

There is no perfect solution to manage time when we are juggling with multiple things in life. HCC has studied lives of college students and suggested an ideal way to plan your week and cater time as per priority.

Before you plan, here is a short to-do list you could follow:

• List your likes and interests
• List your priorities
• Plan and anticipate any contingencies that may occur.

HCC understands that unlike other international schools and colleges, institutions in India mostly work for 6 days or 5.5 days in a week. So, here the fun time for students is definitely reduced. Mostly when we look at a student’s life we feel college and assignments are the only things they need to do. But, the fact is not the same. They have to manage their time with assignments, internals, semester exams, extra study to excel, preparation for competitive exams, internships, final year project work, sleep, food, movies, partying, sports, exercise, friends and phew! a lot more…..With this assumption let us see how an ideal week with high time optimization should look like.

You may have tweak this chart a little here and there to customize it to your course and life requirements. Now you can de-stress yourself, as you have a solution for your time.

My College Magazine

College magazines are cool to have both for the students and the management. However, running a college magazine and publishing it with interesting article every month is not as cool as it sounds. It requires us to run a mini firm to turnaround some quality content by end of every month.

How to start a college magazine?

Starting a college magazine is the easier part, but gaining audience is the difficult side of it. It is always good to have one of your faculty member as a facilitator for this process. Their experience always adds value to the structure of this process.

Announce the intent and let the students of your college know that you have an intent to start a college magazine.

Specify the objectives of starting a college magazine. The objective has to be clear. The reasons could be to build better subject know-how among students, to update them about current affairs or it could be something completely different.

Depending on the response you will know how many of them will be interested to welcome a college magazine in your campus. Not all of those who show interest will be on your team. Only a handful will remain in your core team.

How to build a team?

Once you know who is going to be in the team, spell out the responsibilities and activities they will be involved in. There will be a lot of scramble here. As an initiator you have to find ways to identify each ones strength and capabilities and then assign jobs to them.

What could be the top tasks to be assigned?

1. Writing Articles
2. If it is an offline magazine – managing printing
3. If it is an online magazine – technical know-how and managing a web site
4. Track finances
5. Proof read and edit the articles before release
6. Track feedback of readers and understand what more are they expecting out of a magazine

To make all this happen, the team will require people with editorial abilities  marketing skills, financial and technical know-how.

What next? Launch the Magazine.

This generation participates in a parallel world called the web world. Irrespective of what you choose the magazine to be – either offline or online, make announcements on your college facebook page and tweet about it.

Share your magazine on:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Slideshare
• Pinterest
• Blogger

The list is endless.

Are we done? Not yet.

There is more to it. After releasing the first issue, can we keep up the fire? That is the challenge. Be open to your peer interests. Write and share more about what they want to hear rather than what you want to tell them.

• Add more sections to the magazine.
• Make it interactive
• Have a contest running all the time
• Change the magazine cover

With all these tips and gyaan try to start something new at your college. Be the trendsetter!

What else can I start at college?

• A college radio
• A college community club
• College Contests
• NGO for students of your college to involve in community activities
• Your college blog
• Your college Youtube channel

FEEL FREE TO COMMENT ON THIS ARTICLE AND LET US KNOW WHAT YOU STARTED AT YOUR COLLEGE.

Related articles

• Analysis of college magazines (slideshare.net)