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 Moving across policy and historical documents, institutional rhetoric, teaching materials, site visits, and interviews, The Start-Up Factory documents how entrepreneurial thinking has reshaped the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.

As the nation becomes increasingly divided by economic inequality, racial injustice, xenophobic violence, and authoritarian governance, scholars in writing studies have strived to develop responsive theories and practices to engage students, teachers, administrators, and citizens in the crisis of division and to begin the complicated work of radically transforming our inequitable institutions and society. Writing Across Difference is one of the first collections to gather scholars from across the field engaged in offering theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical resources for understanding, interrogating, negotiating, and writing across difference.  No text in composition has made such a sweeping attempt to place the multiple areas of translingualism, anti-racism, anticolonialism, interdisciplinarity, and disability into conversation or to represent the field as broadly unified around the concept of difference. The chapters in this book specifically explore how monolingual ideology is maintained in institutions and how translingual strategies can (re)include difference; how narrative-based interventions can promote writing across difference in classrooms and institutions by complicating dominant discourses; and how challenging dominant logics of class, race, ability, and disciplinarity can present opportunities for countering divisiveness.  Writing Across Difference offers writing scholars a sustained intellectual encounter with the crisis of difference and foregrounds the possibilities such an encounter offers for collective action toward a more inclusive and equitable society. It presents a variety of approaches for intervening in classrooms and institutions in the interest of focalizing, understanding, negotiating, and bridging difference. The book will be a valuable resource to those disturbed by the bigotry, violence, and fanaticism that mark our political culture and who are seeking inspiration, models, and methods for collective response.  Contributors: Anis Bawarshi, Jonathan Benda, Megan Callow, James Rushing Daniel, Cherice Escobar Jones, Laura Gonzales, Juan Guerra, Stephanie Kerschbaum, Katie Malcolm, Nadya Pittendrigh, Mya Poe, Candice Rai, Iris Ruiz, Ann Shivers-McNair, Neil Simpkins, Alison Y. L. Stephens, Sumyat Thu, Katherine Xue, Shui-yin Sharon Yam

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.

As the nation becomes increasingly divided by economic inequality, racial injustice, xenophobic violence, and authoritarian governance, scholars in writing studies have strived to develop responsive theories and practices to engage students, teachers, administrators, and citizens in the crisis of division and to begin the complicated work of radically transforming our inequitable institutions and society. Writing Across Difference is one of the first collections to gather scholars from across the field engaged in offering theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical resources for understanding, interrogating, negotiating, and writing across difference.  No text in composition has made such a sweeping attempt to place the multiple areas of translingualism, anti-racism, anticolonialism, interdisciplinarity, and disability into conversation or to represent the field as broadly unified around the concept of difference. The chapters in this book specifically explore how monolingual ideology is maintained in institutions and how translingual strategies can (re)include difference; how narrative-based interventions can promote writing across difference in classrooms and institutions by complicating dominant discourses; and how challenging dominant logics of class, race, ability, and disciplinarity can present opportunities for countering divisiveness.  Writing Across Difference offers writing scholars a sustained intellectual encounter with the crisis of difference and foregrounds the possibilities such an encounter offers for collective action toward a more inclusive and equitable society. It presents a variety of approaches for intervening in classrooms and institutions in the interest of focalizing, understanding, negotiating, and bridging difference. The book will be a valuable resource to those disturbed by the bigotry, violence, and fanaticism that mark our political culture and who are seeking inspiration, models, and methods for collective response.  Contributors: Anis Bawarshi, Jonathan Benda, Megan Callow, James Rushing Daniel, Cherice Escobar Jones, Laura Gonzales, Juan Guerra, Stephanie Kerschbaum, Katie Malcolm, Nadya Pittendrigh, Mya Poe, Candice Rai, Iris Ruiz, Ann Shivers-McNair, Neil Simpkins, Alison Y. L. Stephens, Sumyat Thu, Katherine Xue, Shui-yin Sharon Yam