Coming to a Campus Near You: Social Entrepreneurship Ed by Harv Hilowitz August 20, 2018. THE NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF HIGHER EDUCATION

1. 9/4/2018 Coming to a Campus Near You: Social Entrepreneurship Ed - New England Board of Higher Education : New England Board of Higher Education
http://www.nebhe.org/thejournal/coming-to-a-campus-near-you-social-entrepreneurship-ed/ 1/3
Tuition Break NEJHE Newslink Policy & Research SARA Cost Savings Resources
Joblink About NEBHE Our Partners Contact Us Subscribe to NEJHE’s NewsBlast!
Coming to a Campus Near You: Social Entrepreneurship Ed
by Harv Hilowitz
August 20, 2018
Today, many higher education institutions are faced with
declining enrollment, increasing tuitions and calls to infuse
their degree tracks with more practical experiences for
students, leading more directly to meaningful careers. At the
same time, college students are searching for programs
offering practical, academically rigorous work-related
experiences that tie into their social consciousness as citizens
of the world. Social entrepreneurship (SE) education, on
campus and online, may offer a solution.
SE 101. Social entrepreneurs are people who create businesses with the core intention to
help mitigate a social problem, using the proceeds and spinoff services derived from that
business. An example of an SE enterprise is the local thrift store operation that also acts
as a women’s center, training and hiring the supported women in the retail and outreach
roles, while cycling the proceeds into the center’s general operations. SE’s can be for-
profit, nonprofit or hybrid operations, depending on the entity’s mission.
Social impact investing, meanwhile, is most often a corporate form of SE, wherein
existing companies or institutions provide funding for socially oriented projects or
“cloud-seeding” funds for other SE operations. The Newman’s Own philanthropy model
is a well-known form of successful social investment.
Origins. In the late 1800s, some noteworthy businessmen embraced novel approaches
to combine making money with what they thought were socially transformative products.
Among the trailblazers were flour mill operators J.H. Kellogg, C.W. Post, nutritionist
James Caleb Johnson, inventor of granula (now Granola), and Sylvester Graham,
inventor of the famous Graham Cracker. These idealists sought new food products to
feed the nutritionally (and morally) starved workers caught in the horrors of the early
Industrial Revolution. The social entrepreneurship concept caught on, gradually gaining
traction with the social work movement of the 1880s. Today, SE is moving onto
campuses as a subset of business, sustainability and other majors, educating students in
the principles and practices of SE, while also potentially enhancing campus recruitment
yields and student-retention rates.
The term “social entrepreneur” was coined in 1953 in Howard Bowne’s book Social
Responsibilities of the Businessman. The idea certainly existed but had no special
identity prior to that. Amplified in the 1990s by business consultant Charles Leadbeater,
the concept has now melded with growing e-commerce and social media innovations to
become a global phenomenon.
Going global. Social entrepreneurship has evolved from healthy cereals into the
corporate suite, becoming the platform for a wide variety of social ventures. Muhammad
Yunus’s Grameen Bank developed his microloan concept in Asia in 1983, winning the
Nobel Prize in 2006. Fair Trade is another well-known branch of social
entrepreneurship. Starting after World War II by religious groups and NGOs, it
blossomed in the 1970s, now accounting for nearly 2% of total global sales (7.88 Billion
Euros) of major agricultural commodities coffee, cocoa, tea, fruits, sugar, flowers and
numerous handicraft items. And corporate philanthropy seeds the clouds of hundreds of
social entrepreneurship ventures globally.
Commission on Higher
Education & Employability
Aligning higher education, business and
policymakers to increase the
employability of the regions' graduates.
Employability: A National
Imperative Summit
Click here for information and resources
from NEBHE's recent Employability
leadership summit.
Wednesday, August 22, 2018
Embed View on Twitter
Tweets by @nebhe
In #nursing ed, Vt colleges compete with national
online competency-based program @wgu |
@uvmvermont Nurses Bargain to Study in Vermont
sevendaysvt.com/vermont/a-matt…
NEBHE
@nebhe

2. 9/4/2018 Coming to a Campus Near You: Social Entrepreneurship Ed - New England Board of Higher Education : New England Board of Higher Education
http://www.nebhe.org/thejournal/coming-to-a-campus-near-you-social-entrepreneurship-ed/ 2/3
Higher education takes the hint. Since 2008, the prestigious Harvard Business
School has developed MBA-level courses entitled Social Impact Investing, the Social
Innovation Lab, Public Entrepreneurship, and Investing for Social Impact. Harvard
regularly holds major conferences on social entrepreneurship and has published over
300 books, studies, theses and cases on the topic since 1997.
Oxford University’s Saïd Business School offers MBA core courses and fellowships at its
Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship. Classy.org, an online platform, lists 19
universities offering degrees, certifications and courses under the SE umbrella, including
the Wharton School, Yale, Stanford and Cornell. In India, several universities are
jumping on board, with MBAs in Social Entrepreneurship offered at Indira Gandhi
National Open University, Sri Guru Granth Sahib University, and Bangalore University’s
Seshadriuram Institute of Management Studies.
Acting as a facilitator of SE best practices, training and curricula for higher education
institutions, the nonprofit Global Center for Social Entrepreneurship Network (GCSEN)
Foundation has been working with college partners to accelerate offerings of social
entrepreneurship courses, degrees, boot camps and internships. GCSEN provides
curricula, resources, best practice advice and support services to colleges interested in
offering innovative programs for budding social entrepreneurs. Students working in
GCSEN boot camps have already started up a number of small businesses having social
ventures, such as creating a Latino community center, bringing wireless internet service
to schools in Nepal, and building an online app for isolated and depressed college
students.
Founded in 2015 by Mike Caslin, a venture consultant and lecturer at SUNY New Paltz
and professor at Babson College, GCSEN recently was instrumental in helping Wheaton
College of Norton Mass., secure a $10 million gift from the visionary Diana Davis
Spencer Foundation of Bethesda, Md. The gift established an endowed Professorship in
Social Entrepreneurship and provides for the renovation of a business department
building on campus to house SE studies at Wheaton.
Benefits of SE ed. GSCEN’s research has conclusively shown that SE education results
in significant content knowledge gains retained by students; shows significant gains in
self-confidence; is ranked highly as “life-changing” by students; and is highly
recommended by students to their peers. Additionally, SE gained a business formulation
rate near 50%, by students participating in GSCEN programs.
Caslin says his organization’s goal in 10 years is, “To make social entrepreneurship
courses and degrees available on every college and university campus around the world.”
Still, the programs face administrative hurdles—obstacles that Caslin thinks GCSEN can
overcome with its innovative internship program, blended learning online courses and
social entrepreneur boot camps, as well as its model SE curricula that can be easily
absorbed into any college’s existing business or liberal arts programs.
“All the data shows that students are looking for skills that enhance their careers,” says
Caslin. “Our SE coursework and Social Venture Internship program gives them practical
business startup knowledge and field experience, as they work on their own business and
social venture. The program is a career and resume builder, offering practical experience
and professional references. GCSEN programs emphasize the “Four P Impacts” on
People, Profit, Planet and Place, so students can jump-start right into action. Colleges
offering SE programs will attract highly motivated students who want to work in the real
world, and also make a difference.”
It’s clear that SE and its altruistic mission is growing steadily on and off campus. The
key: millennials. By 2025, this cohort of 80 million will be 75% of the entire workforce.
Although millennials have not been breaking any records when it comes to general
entrepreneurship, they have taken to the social consciousness concept in a big way.
Millennials get it. A global conference titled "Prac-ademic Social Entrepreneurship for
a Sustainable World" held at Belgium’s Namur University in 2017 was packed with
faculty and administrators hailing from more than 200 Jesuit business schools and
colleges. Business publications such as Forbes tout the youth movement in SE with
annual feature articles, such as “Meet the Thirty Under Thirty Social Entrepreneurs
Bringing Change in 2017” highlighting “young people who are all working tirelessly to
creatively solve some of the world's toughest problems.”
Maybe social entrepreneurship is an answer to the lagging admissions, lack of student
retention and flat-out lack of relevance our campuses are currently facing.
Higher Ed Joblink
Up­to­the­minute job postings
from New England Higher
Education Recruitment
Consortium
Registration Requirements Specialist
USA - MA - Cambridge
Harvard University
Special Requirements Coordinator
USA - MA - Cambridge
Harvard University
Program Manager
USA - MA - Boston
Harvard University
View all jobs
Stay Connected

3. 9/4/2018 Coming to a Campus Near You: Social Entrepreneurship Ed - New England Board of Higher Education : New England Board of Higher Education
http://www.nebhe.org/thejournal/coming-to-a-campus-near-you-social-entrepreneurship-ed/ 3/3
Privacy Policy Terms & Conditions About NEBHE Resources Contact Us Email Newsletter
Name (required)
Mail (will not be published) (required)
Website
Comment
As Caslin says, “It is vital that a new generation of business-oriented, socially conscious
millennials emerge on campus, creating with purpose a “4-P Impact” with people, profit,
planet and place, to make meaning, make money and move the world to a better place.”
Harv Hilowitz is director of strategic development at the Global Center for Social
Entrepreneurship Network (GCSEN) Foundation.
Related Posts:
From Starter to Closer, BIF 2016 Storytellers Show Good Stuff
A Business School on a World Mission
At Babson, Educating Leaders with a New Worldview to Create Social, Environmental
and Economic Opportunity
Share and Enjoy
Tags: Babson College, Wheaton College, social entrepreneurship, SUNY
New Paltz, Mike Caslin, Muhammad Yunus, social impact investing
Leave a Reply
Facebook Twitter Email LinkedIn