Welcome to the Colloquium for the Advancement of Free-Enterprise Education (CAFÉ)

CAFÉ’s Mission

To advance an accurate and objective understanding of free-enterprise principles through a variety of complementary activities.

Why is CAFÉ important?

All economic activity takes place within a socio-legal environment. A free-enterprise environment is based on the ownership and exchange of private property with property rights enforced and protected by various social rules and laws. To the extent that these conditions exist, economic growth is enhanced, innovation and technological progress occur, and an environment of increasing prosperity and improving standards of living follow. An educated understanding of the benefits of open markets tends to keep societies on free-enterprise paths, to their general benefit.

How does CAFÉ educate?

CAFÉ employs creative ways to communicate the value and importance of freedom of trade, investment and innovation. CAFÉ carefully and objectively investigates the costs and benefits of alternative economic policies through teaching, research, invited speakers, workshops and community and university-wide events and similar activities. A major focus of the colloquium is to clarify the working of unfettered markets to students who will be able to rely on this grounded knowledge and share it with others throughout the rest of their lives.

CAFÉ focuses on the examination of significant ideas and the education of advocates for examining those ideas in the fields of academics and business. Student-development activities will include research, both high-level academic and more applied, as well as introductory connections to organizations like the Foundation for Economic Education, the Institute for Humane Studies, Students for Liberty and others.

CAFÉ’s research includes but is not confined to examining the economic and social implications of the innovations that have produced the sharing economy in all its manifestations. These innovations include, for example, the automation of human tasks.