Higher education institutions are increasingly seeing the value of esports programs.
Today, colleges and universities are building courses and programs centered on esports. These schools are in the process of creating the formal educational backgrounds that will eventually become standard requirements in the industry.
Additionally, collegiate esports programs are also becoming more and more popular and could become a proper source of talent for pro teams in the future.
With the stakes getting higher each year, colleges and universities see an opportunity to be ahead of the curve both scholastically and competitively.
The University of Staffordshire offers undergraduate and postgraduate courses in its esports program. The program touches upon almost every level of esports from event organizing to statistics.
“The BA (Hons) Esports focuses on the business of esports. You will learn within a practical technical environment everything required to host small and large scale events,” their website reads. “Developing your skills for single player and multiplayer team events you will create business plans to build teams, create online communities and promote your events through digital marketing.“
The program starts by focusing in on some of the nitty gritty of esports event organizing, like how to run streams. From there, it adds in more traditional classes such as business marketing and management. For the final year, students tackle larger events as well as diving into some of the legal pitfalls of esports at this time.
The University of Chichester also has an esports program but while Staffordshire focuses in on the business of esports, Chichester touches upon sports medicine and psychology. The university is the first to hire a former pro gamer, Quake 3 Arena player Rams “R2K” Singh, as a senior lecturer for its program. He is also UK national captain in 2013 for the World Cyber Games and ESWC 2007.
More and more colleges and universities are offering education in the esports industry, so students ought to check what programs their local schools offer.
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