The Start-Up Factory

How the cult of capitalism reshaped the American university—and hollowed it out from within.

Over the past several decades, American universities have been remade as engines of entrepreneurial ambition. Technology transfer offices, business incubators, pitch competitions, innovation hubs, and leadership centers now sit at the heart of campus life, radically altering how institutions describe their purpose, structure curricula, and imagine student success. The Start-Up Factory argues that this shift has come at a steep cost.

James Rushing Daniel traces the rise of entrepreneurialism in higher education and shows how universities came to embrace the figure of the founder as both ideal and benefactor. Business leaders—many of them major donors—are celebrated as singular visionaries, their values imported into academic life and framed as models for intellectual work. This reverence, Daniel argues, has narrowed the university's sense of public responsibility for distorted academics, and transformed institutions into finishing schools for aspiring entrepreneurs. Moving across policy and historical documents, institutional rhetoric, teaching materials, site visits, and interviews, The Start-Up Factory documents how entrepreneurial thinking has reshaped the pedagogy, culture, and mission of the American university.

The consequences of this entrepreneurial focus extend far beyond campuses. By promoting the myth of the self-made billionaire, universities help legitimize extreme inequality and normalize forms of power that undermine democratic life. At a moment of deep institutional crisis, when the influence of the billionaire class on college campuses is increasingly absolute and the future of higher education is uncertain, The Start-Up Factory offers a clear-eyed account of how universities arrived here—and why reclaiming their autonomy has become an urgent task.