Abstract
The American creative workforce has reported high levels of self-employment as an important manifestation of entrepreneurship in the arts. Yet graduates of arts programs in higher education have reported gaps in the preparation they received for self-reliant careers, including training in arts entrepreneurship. Moreover, these limitations in self-employment training are further compounded for BIPOC arts students through underrepresentation in the college experience. Data from the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project provides insight into arts alumni’s entrepreneurial intentions, particularly in freelancing and new venture creation, both in the arts and in other fields. This chapter explores these entrepreneurial inclinations with alumni’s perceptions of higher education institutions’ offerings of diversity, professional development outside of the classroom, and community-based experiential learning opportunities. The study found arts alumni who graduated from HEIs offering a diverse socio-cultural environment, and community engagement opportunities are more likely to pursue self-reliant careers regardless of their racial identity. The study also found that the current career development offerings of HEIs reduce the likelihood of alumni’s intention to pursue self-reliant careers. Other findings suggest that American universities need to examine their alumni’s intentions and needs for freelancing and creating new ventures in different ways.
Notes
- 1.
The creative occupations include arts, design, entertainment, sports, and media.
- 2.
The major distinctions between self-employed, independent contractor, and freelancer are largely tax-based. They are often used interchangeably with one another. We choose to use the term “freelancer” to include all the three types of workers.
- 3.
The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) does not distinguish arts-focused majors from the full population of the HEI.
- 4.
The Federal Pell Grant is awarded by the U.S. Department of Education to undergraduate students who have demonstrated “exceptional financial need.”
- 5.
The percentage of white students and the percentage of Pell grants are derived from the IPEDS.
- 6.
The LAI collected county level data such as nonprofit arts revenue and expenditures, creative businesses and nonprofit arts organizations per 100,000 residents between 2009 and 2015 (Kushner & Cohen, 2018).
- 7.
We also want to note that this finding may be because the percentage of African American and Latino students captured by SNAAP data are not representative of their racial makeup in the general American population. Other studies have shown significant different patterns of entrepreneurship between different racial identities. For instance, the rate of new entrepreneurs for Latino Americans was significantly higher than other ethnicities while that rate for white Americans was much higher than that of Asian and Black Americans in 2019 (Kauffman Foundation, 2020).
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Guo, W., McGraw, D. (2024). Step** Outside the Classroom: Connecting Contextual Factors of American Universities and Arts Alumni’s Entrepreneurial Intentions. In: Woronkowicz, J., Noonan, D. (eds) Innovating Institutions and Inequities in the Arts. Sociology of the Arts . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-59231-7_4
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