"Producing Entrepreneurs: The Paradox of Entrepreneurship Education in the United States and Germany, 1800-2015"

Historians and historical social scientists have long emphasized the role of knowledge creation and dissemination in the entrepreneurial process (Cole, 1959; Casson, 2010). Yet, little research has examined how exactly entrepreneurs are “educated” and how educational content, programs, and institutions have changed over time. Extant histories were produced by management scholars focused narrowly on the rapid rise of entrepreneurship classes and programs at American business schools since the 1980s, and adopts a strong “Whig” interpretation on the progress of the field (Katz, 2003; Kuratko, 2005). In this paper we take a longer and broader view of entrepreneurship education, considering its development in the United States and Germany since the early nineteenth-century. We consider the development of courses and programs not only in business schools but also by publishers and other media, business associations, and governments. Our sources include book and magazine publications focused on teaching entrepreneurs both the skills and ethos of entrepreneurship, the archives of several US and German business associations, catalogs and syllabi from business schools, and oral histories. We argue that the evolution of entrepreneurship education has been shaped by a central paradox: while entrepreneurial knowledge and skill was greatly valorized as a cornerstone of capitalist culture, entrepreneurial education often lacked legitimacy because of its seemingly unscientific and uncodified character. This was especially true in universities and business schools that prized expert knowledge and distinct domains of epistemology above learning that was highly subjective, stubbornly non-disciplinary, and that failed to fit the classifications of the labor market. Yet, because there was demand and profit in producing entrepreneurs, a variety of organizations and institutions jockeyed for position in selling entrepreneurship education to meet distinct pecuniary or strategic needs.