Against Entrepreneurship: Education, Nation, and Inequality

This event is part of the School of Education's . These seminars are free and open to the public.

Speaker: Dr Kirsty Morrin (Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology, University of Liverpool)

In this paper I unpack a series of conceptual understandings of ‘entrepreneurship’, and its relationship to education. The paper traces the changing uses and meaning of entrepreneurship over time. Empirically, I explore the ways in which entrepreneurial discourse marbles its logic through educational institutions in both policy and practice. I trace these entrepreneurial logics throughout the history of mass public education in England, and through to the current academised system. I argue there is a ‘new’ spirit of entrepreneurship in education and building on Sennett’s intervention to see entrepreneurs as a form of ‘Schumpeterian ideal everymen’ [sic], Entrepreneurship I suggest, has become the ‘ideal everynarrative’ in education. Thinking beyond education, I consider the connected entrepreneurial public discourse, as one that reveals contradictory understandings of the term, conceals precariousness, and reproduces inequalities. The paper concludes by calling for a move against current entrepreneurial initiatives in education, and instead suggests the need for broad and critical public conversations about its repeated failures.

Dr. Kirsty Morrin is a senior lecturer in sociology at the University of Liverpool. Her research is focused on educational inequalities. Currently her work examines and critiques the Academies Programme in England, and entrepreneurial initiatives in education more generally. She is writing a monograph on this topic, Academies, Entrepreneurship, and Inequality: The Politics of Successful Failure, scheduled for 2025.

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