Browsing by Subject "http://www.yso.fi/onto/yso/p19497"

According to national and international educational policy objectives, entrepreneurship education should be a cross cutting component of all sectors of education, including higher education. The goal is to not only teach entrepreneurial skills but also to raise individuals towards the ideal of enterprising self. At the same time, universities are expected to operate more and more like private companies. This study examines this phenomenon called entrepreneurial ethos from the perspective of university students. Educational policy and university practices are examined in the frame of governance and knowledge capitalism that describes the transformation of education and work in our time. The study examines how the entrepreneurial ethos appears in students’ discourses and how students perceive the ideal of a good student in the context of entrepreneurial ethos. The data consists of interviews by fourteen Aalto University students from a technical field. The data was analysed in discourse analytic view. In the study, the discursive approach extends beyond the analytical method: It shows how discourses are produced and managed, what the consequences are and how social reality is built on them. The results of this study showed that entrepreneurship appeared to students mainly as startup entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship education as practical project work as opposed to theoretical study. The aim to become entrepreneurial was seen as an important goal of every individual. A good student was described as an entrepreneurial individual, with an emphasis on social skills and study interests, but partly as an individual in the midst of conflicting demands. Mostly, the students committed themselves to discourses of entrepreneurial ethos, but criticism was directed towards over-emphasizing the startup culture in the university. Governing through university practices shapes students’ subjectivities towards entrepreneurial self.