Bold and ambitious news rings out of the progressive halls of Abercrombie Business School this week, often regarded as the frontline of USYD’s most avant-garde and culture-shattering ideas.
Today, the Dean announced to the Academic Board the launch of a long-awaited initiative, which seeks to fundamentally disrupt the way first year students think about the world. It is said this course will be giving them an internship in one of the most productive tools of a modern entrepreneur, “contracting their [hopefully] profitable social partnerships and making those long-term investments which, with any luck, will pay lucrative dividends” (Honi believes this translates to “making life-long friends” in other faculties).
BUSS1050: Trading Friendship in the Social Economy, is the ground-breaking result from Australia’s corporate and education sector working hand in hand to develop a solution to the large-scale loneliness and lack of campus life that has plagued our university for the last three years. The course has been developed following what one KPMG social director called “the application of the scientific method to the commerce of making associates”, in which some of Australia’s top CEO’s and most socially distinguished Pitt Street Cryptocurrency traders have distilled their best Lunch Club small talk into a syllabus, teaching budding business barons to “extract the optimum social market value from your connections”.
Graciously, Honi has had a first look at the exact content of this unique market analysis course, which has already been lauded and praised for its “astounding ability to allow students to not only commodify, but trade in friendship!” (Australian Financial Review). After observing an intensive trial program over the last few months, Honi isdelighted to be able to share an outline of this award-winning education with you.
Students started the first few weeks of the course by learning about appropriate conversation topics for social encounters. It appeared almost like high school with the tutor making the entire class recite core phrases: “May I have some more bubbly?”; “Do you winter in Perisher or Hotham?” and “Oh, what accountant are you with?” No doubt these life-like prompts would serve to warm even the coldest heart on Wall Street to you.
Exercises predominated the second third of the classes, with one task giving students a week to make as many LinkedIn connections as possible and then assigning midsemester grades based on this ranking. This, as one tutor puts it, “replicates the real and natural allocation of resources in a de-regulated and free social market”. Having gained these contacts, the final leg of this new business journey focuses on how to leverage contacts and friendships. “One must remember to distribute the most time to the most valuable social assets…”, one of the slides in the final lesson argued, “…only then will the social benefits trickle down to you”.
The unit will commence its formal teaching this semester and will be compulsory for first year students, however conciliation is offered in the form of a free LinkedIn Premium membership which will hopefully entice older students to hone their skills and become sharks of the social market.
