The Entrepreneurial Domains of American Higher Education (review)

The institutionalization of entrepreneurialism on American college campuses is well documented in this brief but comprehensive compilation by Matthew M. Mars and Amy Scott Metcalfe. The text simultaneously serves multiple objectives. It offers a snapshot of entrepreneurial presence throughout the "products" and pedagogy of campus academic, co-curricular, and service elements.

It provides a thorough and well-organized literature review and theoretical framework for the evolution of entrepreneurial engagement in American higher education. And it suggests—perhaps challenges—a political perspective of neo-liberalism that, according to the authors, both inspires and inhibits entrepreneurial advancement on our campuses.

Early on, Mars and Metcalfe introduce a variety of terms that showcase political drivers influencing campus entrepreneurial engagements. Academic entrepreneurship is presented as both panacea to societal problems and in conflict with "academic values and intellectual integrity" (p. 2). This tension, featuring entrepreneurialism as the spirit of academic innovation versus external corrupter, emerges throughout and reminds the reader always to look behind the creative initiative to discover political agendas and organizational priorities. The term "neoliberalism" appears quite often as a persistent reminder of the corrupting consequences of putting economic gain (for both higher education and corporate America) ahead of societal need.

The core of the book, however, features a broad survey of the related and associated literature focused on the study of entrepreneurship in higher education. The theories of entrepreneurship are identified by function (e.g., market risk takers, economic "disruptors," market stabilizers), form (e.g., supply/demand influences, cross-disciplinary initiatives, response to external conditions), and the interplay between individual and institutional entrepreneurial efforts.

These theories are subsequently tested against what Mars and Metcalfe refer to as "The New Economy," an economy comprised of knowledge activities and heavily dependent on technology and science. They assert that the new economy has significantly influenced higher education and has led to a "social contract between universities and industry" (p. 29). This social contract is at the heart of the tension noted above between societal needs and corporate interests but, regardless of motivation, has clearly fostered what Mars and Metcalfe refer to as "academic capitalism."

Academic capitalism suggests that faculty and institutions have well adapted to market forces, resource limitations, and public policy changes by embracing technology transfer, institutional licensing options, and managerial alternatives. This adaptation has quickly led to entrepreneurial enterprise and innovation on college and university campuses.

Subsequent chapters focus on conditions and influences that drive entrepreneurial behaviors and initiatives in higher education. They include a dramatic shift in access to resources, branding strategies (e.g., George Mason University's self-depiction as an entrepreneurial university), federal policies that promote the commercialization of faculty inventions, and a small but lucrative array of initiatives that have fueled institutional competition for entrepreneurial success.

These influences are not limited to the research university, and Mars and Metcalfe showcase comparable efforts at liberal arts institutions, community colleges and proprietary schools. They decry "the pervasive nature of student consumerism" (p. 48), although they appreciate that community and for-profit colleges are expected to be responsive to workforce demands and economic conditions.

Regrettably, Mars and Metcalfe give short shrift to what appears to be a growing phenomenon on many college campuses: the expansion of social entrepreneurship. Social entrepreneurship is described as a less radical version of social activism, one that has been subject to the narcissistic influences of neoliberal policies and personal economic fortunes. This development seems to fly in the face of the authentic nature of the social entrepreneur movement where student and faculty social enterprises have, in fact, addressed local, domestic, and global societal needs and have done so through entrepreneurial designs and implementation. The success of the social entrepreneur movement has been well documented by authors such as Bornstein (2004) and Gergen and Vanourek (2008).

In the final chapters, Mars and Metcalfe examine entrepreneurship education and its emergence as a legitimate field of study. Here, too, the authors reveal their...