The Emerging Domains of Entrepreneurship Education: Students, faculty, and the Capitalist Academy

Abstract

Entrepreneurship within higher education is most often examined as set of market and market-like behaviors within colleges and universities. The field of entrepreneurship studies has been largely neglected by higher education scholars. This qualitative study focuses on entrepreneurship as an academic discipline emerging within the academic capitalist/learning regime. Specific attention is paid to expanding student markets, capitalist behaviors among entrepreneurship students, and the emerging multidisciplinary faculty culture associated with the expanding academic discipline of entrepreneurial studies.I used semi-structured individual interviews, document analysis, and self-administered student questionnaires as the methods for collecting data essential to better understanding the evolution of entrepreneurship education within the context of academic capitalism. The research was conducted at two public research universities: the University of Iowa and the University of Texas at El Paso. From this study, I show the increasing trend of undergraduate students acting as state-subsidized capitalists, the fluid and recursive nature of the capitalist academy, and the multidimensional traits of the faculty cultures that are emerging within the academic capitalist knowledge/learning regime.