Students in the Foundations of Entrepreneurship class pour hours of work into creating, marketing and selling their products. Yet, when it comes to profits, the money doesn’t return to the students who put in the effort, nor do they have much say in how it is spent.
ENTR 120 introduces students to the basics of business start-ups. Each semester, students sell products at the Venture Out Market on campus, applying what they’ve learned. Business ideas are pitched, a handful are selected, and student “CEOs” are assigned teams of peers to launch the chosen projects.
The Griggs Center for Entrepreneurship and Philanthropy provides each group with seed funding, and students must repay the loan while also reaching a profit benchmark to earn an A. This model teaches accountability, but it also creates pressure. Some students even report buying back their own products, or asking family members to do so, just to meet the profit requirement.
“I know some people who spent like $200 to make their profit so they could get an A in the class,” said Kaden Barker, junior finance major from Pratt, Kansas. “It’s the first pay-to-win class.”
Former teaching assistant for the class, Mason Hejl, said the professors and TA’s are aware that some groups buy their own products or have their parents buy them so that they can pass.
“While it’s not encouraged, the whole point is to sell and to make money for your business,” Hejl said. “And sometimes students have found that one easy way they can make money is to have friends, family or themselves purchase it.”
Valeria Mavo, junior interior architecture and design major, from Austin, said she heard a student sold his own Xbox on the last day of the project so that he could meet his profit goal. Even though his Xbox was completely unrelated to his business.
So, where do the profits go?
Hejl said half of the profits fund scholarships for students in the College of Business Administration, while the other half supports local nonprofits through the Griggs Center’s philanthropy board.
“They work with the city of Abilene to help give money to local nonprofits who’ve requested grants,” Hejl said. “I got to sit on the board, and it was one of my favorite classes because we got to meet as a team and talk about what it means to give.”
This setup clearly benefits the community, but it raises an ethical question: if students generate the profits, shouldn’t they have more say in where the money goes?
Grades alone don’t always motivate students, especially at the end of a long semester. Several students said they would work harder if they could see a tangible reward for their efforts.
“So as a way to motivate the students, I think the money should go towards the students as well,” Mavo said. “If you don’t see the money, there’s no motivation, because you’re not seeing the product of the things that you work for.”
The concern isn’t only about fairness. In real-world business, profit management is as important as product development or marketing. Giving students partial control over their profits would reinforce that lesson. For example, each group could split earnings evenly, then donate half to a philanthropy of their choice. That way, students would both learn responsibility and feel rewarded for their work.
At the very least, students deserve more agency. Even if returning profits directly is not feasible, allowing groups to choose where their portion of the donation goes would strengthen both their motivation and their sense of ownership.
