American public universities have passed through three stages of development: the religious, the philanthropic/land-grant, and the federal research university. Squeezed by government budget cuts and demands for more money to pay for research and faculty raises, U.S. higher education has entered a fourth phase, the entrepreneurial university. Public universities are increasingly capitalizing on the intellectual property of their faculty and students to sustain themselves and expand. Administrators spout free-market rhetoric as faculty attempt to commercialize research by creating spin-off companies. Using Louisiana State University as a case study, this dissertation, applies a combination of organizational knowledge creation and resource dependence theories to analyze the emergence of academic entrepreneurialism. This study also assesses LSUs capitalistic effectiveness against models of entrepreneurial development used by other U.S. colleges and frames entrepreneurial communication within the context of the states political environment, state budget cuts, and tuition waivers awarded to academically superior undergraduates. LSU messaging is compared to other peer public universities and scrutinized within the framework of results from a national public opinion survey on LSUs image. Results suggest strong support for the concept of university entrepreneurialism, but indicate the American public, aside from athletics, doesnt know much about LSU academics or research. Testing of LSU-related messages, meanwhile, advances themes that resonate among respondents and provide potential communication paths for increasing LSUs national academic prominence and entrepreneurial success.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LSU/oai:etd.lsu.edu:etd-11162006-135027 |
| Date | 17 November 2006 |
| Creators | Zewe, Charles F. |
| Contributors | Kirby Goidel, Richard Nelson, Katherine Benton-Cohen, Jack Hamilton, Ralph Izard |
| Publisher | LSU |
| Source Sets | Louisiana State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-11162006-135027/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached herein a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to LSU or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below and in appropriate University policies, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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