Local Enterprise

Local economies need local business leaders. The alternative to locally-committed entrepreneurship is extractive absentee capital: corporations headquartered in distant cities that hire locally at market wages, extract the surplus, and have no particular investment in the community's long-term flourishing. Communities served by absentee capital may have economic activity, but they do not have economic ownership.

CHI forms a different kind of merchant and entrepreneur — business leaders with a sense of place-obligation. Not naïve local romanticism, but a coherent vision: businesses that hire from the community, source locally where possible, reinvest in local institutions, and see their own long-term flourishing as linked to the community's. This is not charity; it is a different economic logic, grounded in the multi-generational time horizon that is central to CHI's mission.

The accredited commerce programs CHI deploys are rigorous in their content — accounting, finance, management, marketing — but they are shaped by the CHI context: taught by tutors who are themselves local business owners or professionals, in communities where the students' grandparents built the town, for graduates who intend to stay and build.

Bachelor of Business Administration

Full BBA with concentrations in management, finance, and entrepreneurship. Designed for students who intend to start or lead businesses in their local communities.

Associate of Arts — Business

Two-year business foundation covering accounting, economics, management, and marketing. Transfer pathway to BBA completion.