Social Entrepreneurship as a Cultural Script: Examining the Unequal Returns to Signaling Global Citizenship and Entrepreneurship in Elite College Applications Restricted; Files Only
Nixon, Joseph Trent (Spring 2026)
Abstract
This dissertation examines a growing but understudied phenomenon: high school students founding globally focused, prosocial organizations before college. I conceptualize these activities as enactments of a social entrepreneurial script, a culturally legitimated combination of global citizenship and entrepreneurship. Drawing on neoinstitutional world society theory, signaling theory, and cultural capital theory, I consider why adolescents enact this script and how elite universities reward it. I analyze applications from a complete admissions cycle to an elite university in the United States and link them to academic records. In the first paper, I develop embedding-based measures of global citizenship from application text and pair them with a founder indicator derived from applicants’ activity descriptions. I use these measures to test whether applicants who signal global citizenship and entrepreneurship through founding are more likely to receive an initial offer of admission, net of academic, demographic, writing, and application controls. Returns appear strongest when global citizenship and entrepreneurship are combined within the same extracurricular activity, suggesting that colleges reward a coherent and culturally legible social entrepreneurial script rather than merely separate desirable traits. The second paper shows that the returns to this script are classed. At the admissions gate, applicants from college-educated families receive greater returns to enacting the script, while first-generation college students lose their baseline admissions advantage when enacting the script. After matriculation, however, the pattern is more complex. Global citizenship in high school activities is positively associated with term GPA and, in some models, persistence, while first-generation students who founded highly global organizations earn especially strong term GPAs. Evidence for longer-run persistence and graduation benefits is weaker and mixed, suggesting that the script’s salience decays over time. Together, the dissertation shows how globally legitimated models of actorhood are enacted by adolescents, rewarded by elite educational gatekeepers, and unevenly converted into educational advantage. It contributes to the world society, cultural capital, and entrepreneurship literatures by identifying the social entrepreneurial script as a consequential and classed cultural resource in contemporary higher education.
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION 1
THE EVOLUTION OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES 3
Increased Access and Enrollment 3
Returns to Attending College 6
Competition in College Admissions 8
HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS CREATING ORGANIZATIONS 9
PAPER 1: THE SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURIAL SCRIPT AND COLLEGE ADMISSIONS 14
Signaling in College Admissions 16
COLLEGE APPLICANTS AS ACTORS IN WORLD SOCIETY 18
Global Citizenship 19
The Rise of Entrepreneurship 21
The Social Entrepreneurial Script: Global Citizenship Meets Entrepreneurship 23
The Multifaceted Role of Colleges and Universities in World Society 25
DATA AND METHODS 28
Dependent Variable: Offer of Admission 29
Constructing Independent Variables from Application Text 29
Independent Variable: Global Citizenship 32
Independent Variable: Founder 35
Control Variables 35
RESULTS 38
DISCUSSION 42
Limitations and Future Research 43
PAPER 2: HOW SOCIAL CLASS BACKGROUND SHAPES RETURNS TO THE SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURIAL SCRIPT 46
CLASS AND EDUCATIONAL OUTCOMES 47
Class and Postsecondary Education 48
CULTURAL CAPITAL AND THE SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURIAL SCRIPT 49
DATA AND METHODS 53
Key Dependent Variables 54
Independent Variables 55
Control Variables 57
Analytical Strategy 58
RESULTS 59
Pre-Matriculation Outcome: Admission 59
Post-Matriculation Outcome: Term GPA 66
Post-Matriculation Outcomes: Persistence and Attainment 70
DISCUSSION 73
Limitations and Future Research 78
CONCLUSION 81
APPENDIX: SUPPLEMENTARY ANALYSES 111
REFERENCES 118
About this Dissertation
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File download under embargo until 27 May 2032 | 2026-05-01 13:17:28 -0400 | File download under embargo until 27 May 2032 |
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