With their feet on the ground: a quantitative study of music students’ attitudes towards entrepreneurship education

The present study examines students’ attitudes toward entrepreneurship education. The context of the study are the arts, where we empirically test whether different dimensions of arts entrepreneurship education are recognized by students from higher music education institutes in the Netherlands. Specifically, we investigate 167 music students’ perceived need for various entrepreneurship education topics, because students’ concurrent attitudes toward entrepreneurship education may affect their future career behaviours. Our findings suggest that students embrace a holistic approach to entrepreneurship education, in terms of new venture creation, being enterprising, and employability and career self-management. Values such as a passion for music and the need for autonomy are not at odds with the perceived need for entrepreneurship education in relation to vocational work. As one of the first attempts to quantitatively investigate students’ perceived need for entrepreneurship education (PNEE), this study is a stepping stone for future quantitative research in this area

Young musicians’ career identities: do bohemian and entrepreneurial career identities compete or cohere?

One of the most-discussed tensions in the cultural and creative industries is that between art and commerce, creativity and business, the artistic and the economic logic. This paper investigates in how far this discrepancy manifests itself in young musicians’ career identities. Based on extant qualitative research, we distinguish between bohemian and entrepreneurial career identities. The goal of our study is to understand whether the two compete (stand in tension) or cohere (harmonise). We address this in a quantitative manner, by surveying 146 music students from two Dutch music schools. An exploratory factor analysis reveals three components of musicians’ career identities, which pertain to ‘open-mindedness’, ‘career-mindedness’ and ‘money-mindedness’. The former two unite bohemian and entrepreneurial career identity items. None of the components exhibits exclusively bohemian career identity items. This leads us to conclude that young musicians do not necessarily experience tensions between bohemian and entrepreneurial imperatives. Rather, they hold career identities that combine bohemian and entrepreneurial elements in a synergetic manner