@article{52751d7ace5147ce9cb1179e22c6fa80,
title = "Community and autonomy: Motivations for entrepreneurship among arizona community college students",
abstract = "Over the past half-century, as neoliberal governance agendas dismantle state-sponsored safety nets and emphasize individual economic responsibility, entrepreneurship has become a ubiquitous form of work. Ethnographic research shows that individuals who pursue entrepreneurship are often motivated by a neoliberal ethos of self-reliance, higher earnings, and greater autonomy. Recent research, however, has shown that motivations vary for entrepreneurs from diverse racial, ethnic, and class backgrounds. Whether or not these differences apply to college students who are seeking to become entrepreneurs has yet to be fully explored. In this article, we examine the entrepreneurial motivations of historically underrepresented students to understand whether or not they are influenced by established tropes of neoliberal agency. Using ethnographic methods with community college students enrolled in a five-week entrepreneurship-Training program, we find that while students aspire to become entrepreneurs primarily to fulfill a sense of autonomy, they are simultaneously motivated for reasons of community benefit. Our research demonstrates that neoliberal, socially-progressive, and communally-oriented pursuits are entangled in ways that defy easy categorization and may provide opportunities for progressive {"}uses of{"} traditionally neoliberal practices. These findings can help educational institutions build training programs that align with students goals with hopes of positively impacting the greater local/global community.",
keywords = "community college, education, entrepreneurship training, motivations, neoliberalism, students",
author = "Alissa Ruth and Melissa Beresford and Cantu, {Elizabeth A.}",
note = "Funding Information: Poder (Spanish for “to be able to” and “power”) was a three-year pilot program supported by private grant funding. The website description of the program states, “Poder is a 5-week entrepreneurship program offered at no cost to Maricopa Community College students by Arizona State University, supported by grant funding from the Cisco corporate advised fund at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.” The program operated between Spring 2016 and Fall 2018 at five community college campuses during the fall and spring semesters. The program was open only to students in the community college system; it did not grant any course credits. Students were recruited to the program in order to “apply entrepreneurship skills to solve community issues,” “learn how to pitch” their ideas, and “use technology to maximize impact.” Any student enrolled in the Maricopa Community College system was eligible to apply for the Poder program. Advertisements stated, “Students may be at any stage with existing [entrepreneurial] projects or may create new projects during ASU Poder. No entrepreneurship experience is required to participate.” The application asked students their goals, where they were at in their projects, and what resources they needed to pursue their ventures. The program recruitment materials stated that proposed entrepreneurial projects “can be of any scope and nature…related to social services, food and restaurants, retail, medical, civic engagement, environmental, art and performance, education, technology, among others.” The program curriculum supported and guided students as they designed ventures and learned about developing business plans, networking, pitching, and the value of technology toward their plans. After they participated in Poder, students were eligible to compete to win seed funding to start, grow, or launch their originally proposed or newly created enterprise, thus alleviating some of the financial barriers many historically disadvantaged entrepreneurs face launching ventures. Over five weeks, students committed approximately thirty hours to attend in-person sessions and complete self-paced virtual modules. Funding Information: A separate grant to research and evaluate the Poder program was also funded by the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. Institutional Review Board approval was received from both Arizona State University (ASU) and partnering community colleges deploying the program. The research team was led by a Ph.D. anthropologist employed by ASU (first author), who was external to the Poder program design. She hired and oversaw the training of two Ph.D. student research assistants (also from ASU) on data collection techniques, including participant observation, field notes, and semi-structured interviewing. The research assistants were present at all in-person sessions to conduct participant observation, take notes on class discussions, and to build rapport with program students before conducting interviews (Bernard 2006). The findings presented here come directly from interviews, but our ethnographic fieldwork helped us better understand the program and students. All research presented here was acquired using informed consent, and we use pseudonyms to protect the identities of participants. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2020 Society for Applied Anthropology. All rights reserved.",
year = "2020",
doi = "10.17730/1938-3525-79.3.237",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "79",
pages = "237--246",
journal = "Human Organization",
issn = "0018-7259",
publisher = "Society for Applied Anthropology",
number = "3",
}