By Charmaine Ndlela
The Department of Higher Education and Training is considering expanding its Entrepreneurship Development in Higher Education (EDHE) programme to TVET colleges as government seeks to equip more students with the skills and support to start businesses and create jobs.
Deputy Director-General for the University Education Branch at the department, Professor Thandi Lewin, said discussions were already under way on how the programme, or a similar model, could be introduced in TVET colleges.
Lewin was speaking to Inside Education on the sidelines of the 2026 EDHE Absa Studentpreneurs Indaba at the Birchwood Hotel and OR Tambo Conference Centre in Boksburg on Thursday.
The two-day national gathering brought together about 500 student entrepreneurs, academics, investors, university leaders, industry stakeholders and entrepreneurship ecosystem partners.
Lewin said the expansion was particularly important as TVET colleges increasingly move towards occupational programmes.
“But I think as the TVET colleges go more into the occupational programmes and into that space, we need to really think about how this programme, or a similar programme, can be set up in the TVET colleges. So it is something we’re talking about as a department,” Lewin said.
She said TVET colleges could draw on the experience gained from implementing the programme at universities.
The EDHE programme is currently funded through the University Capacity Development Programme, with a portion of the subsidy allocated to universities being used to support the initiative.
“At the moment, the funding for this programme comes through the University Capacity Development Programme, so it’s specifically a portion of the subsidy that we provide to universities that is top-sliced for this programme,” Lewin said.
“It’s something that could have huge traction in TVET colleges and we can learn a lot from how we’ve used the university programme to implement it in TVET colleges.”
The programme is aimed at making entrepreneurship a broader part of the higher education experience, rather than focusing only on students who already run businesses.
Lewin said it had three main pillars.
The first supports student entrepreneurship through programmes designed to help students start and develop businesses.
The second seeks to embed entrepreneurship in the curriculum so that students, regardless of their field of study, are exposed to entrepreneurial thinking.
The third focuses on developing entrepreneurial universities that can turn research, teaching and innovation into real-world solutions.
“The idea of the programme is to ensure that university students get access to entrepreneurship education throughout their degrees, regardless of which field they’re going into,” Lewin said.
She said the broader objective was to ensure students could either find employment after graduation or create employment for themselves and others.
However, balancing entrepreneurship with academic responsibilities remains a challenge for students running businesses while studying.
Lewin said universities provided various forms of academic and student support, while mentorship through EDHE could help student entrepreneurs manage competing demands.
“The difficulty that probably students who are also running businesses face is the same that students who also work are facing: how to balance your academics with earning money if you are working on the side?” she said.
She said students who chose entrepreneurship needed to develop the ability to manage both their studies and businesses.
“Through this programme, I think some of the mentorship work that gets done through the EDHE programme really helps with that,” Lewin said.
The department also acknowledged that entrepreneurship training alone was not enough, particularly when students and graduates need funding, mentorship and other support to grow their businesses.
Lewin said government departments and agencies would need to work together to ensure young people could access the support needed to turn entrepreneurial ideas into sustainable businesses.
“We also need to work across government to ensure that when people do graduate, and even if they don’t, that they have access to funding opportunities and to mentorship and support that they can gain access to,” she said.
This includes agencies such as the National Youth Development Agency, the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition and the Department of Small Business Development.
The push comes as government increasingly looks to entrepreneurship and skills development as part of its response to high youth unemployment.
Lewin said graduates were generally less likely to be unemployed than young people without higher education qualifications, but the department wanted universities to prepare students to enter the labour market or create opportunities for others.
“The fact is that if you graduate from university you’re far less likely to be unemployed than if you are not making it into university. So graduate unemployment is not as high. Obviously, what we want is to create young people at universities who are able to go out into the world and either find employment or create employment for themselves and for others,” she said.
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