Exploring the Privatized Dimension of Entrepreneurship Education and Its Link to the Emergence of the College Student Entrepreneur

In developing the theory of academic capitalism, Slaughter and Rhoades (2004) argued that the notable shift in higher education toward the private marketplace that began in the late 1970s has been a response to both resource dependencies (see Pfeffer & Salancik, 2003) and neoliberal policy environments (see Harvey, 2005). Accordingly, these theorists illuminated and analyzed the organizational restructuring that has enhanced the abilities of post-secondary institutions and those within to engage in market and market-like activities. The pervasiveness of such organizational change has resulted in the emergence of a new regime within higher education: the academic capitalist knowledge/learning regime (Slaughter & Rhoades, 2004). This new regime co-exists with the longstanding public good knowledge/ learning regime that is largely predicated on the freedom of professors and students to create and exchange knowledge and provide social critique in isolation of market and political pressures. Altbach (1997) has indicated, however, that market permeation in higher education has contributed to student disengagement in the kinds of social and political activism characteristic of the public good regime. Educators who are interested in pedagogy for social justice and the betterment of society are likely to share Altbach’s concern over the dilution of the public good regime due to the rise of academic capitalism in the post-secondary academy.