American democracy will confront an increasingly bleak future unless colleges make civic learning a central part of students’ education, says a report released Tuesday by the National Task Force on Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement.
“This is a moment of serious reckoning for our democracy,” said Carol Geary Schneider, president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities and one of the members of the task force that produced the report, “A Crucible Moment: College Learning and Democracy’s Future.” It was commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education.
The report coincides with a daylong event on Tuesday at the White House. It calls for colleges to renew their commitment to civic education at a time when higher education is talked about chiefly as a means of job training.
Civic learning and democratic engagement should become explicit goals of college, and take more forms than civics courses, the authors say. For example, every discipline should teach relevant civic issues and debates.
As envisioned in the report, each college would demonstrate as part of its “defining character” a spirit of public-mindedness, openness, and civility. Colleges would cut money from areas that are less critical and apply it to these efforts instead. They would also train students to be civically literate and encourage them to continue working for the public good after graduating.
Policies would change, too, if the report’s recommendations were to be adopted.
Accreditors would evaluate the extent to which colleges require civic learning on their campuses. The government would encourage colleges to make more money available for students to work at jobs serving civic purposes. Under current federal requirements, at least 7 percent of work-study money pays for students to work in community-based jobs.
Federal-grant guidelines would require proposed projects to show how they build civic learning and democratic engagement. The federal government would also consider establishing a Civic Action Corps, which would parallel the Reserve Officer Training Corps, with scholarships and courses offered to students during college, and public service expected after they graduate.
Stemming a Decline
Worries about America’s civic health have been widely noted for decades. A national commission on civic renewal in 1998 fretted about the citizenry being “in danger of becoming a nation of spectators.” In 2010, just one in four high-school seniors scored proficient or better on national civics exams, and college seniors do not fare much better on other measures, the report says.
Evidence suggests college students want to be more civically engaged, however. The authors cite 2010 data from the Higher Education Research Institute showing that eight in 10 seniors reported doing some form of community service during college.
But such examples point to the confusion between civic engagement and civic knowledge, said Michael B. Poliakoff, vice president of policy for the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, which advocates a return to the core curriculum. Dwindling civic knowledge is tied directly to the diminution of the core curriculum, he said.
“Being involved in civic initiatives is a good thing. It’s at the core of engaged citizenship,” Mr. Poliakoff said. “But to be effective, it must be informed.”
For example, he said, colleges err when they allow students to fulfill distribution requirements for history by taking a class on American history as shown through film or music.
A course like that is worth studying as an elective, he added, but it does little to further students’ understanding of civic processes, shared history, or how government works. “It’s worse than nothing because it pretends civic education has taken place when it hasn’t,” Mr. Poliakoff said.
The report also asks higher-education leaders, faculty, and staff to take on another duty when its plate is growing increasingly full. In recent years, colleges have been called on to make higher education more accessible to more students, constrain tuition costs, produce more graduates, train them for jobs, stimulate local economies, and figure out how to assess how much students are learning. “We had so many other things to do, we put democracy on the back burner,” Ms. Schneider said.
It must be returned to the front, the authors note, even as the economy sputters, and students, policy makers, and analysts gauge higher education in terms of its financial utility. But by focusing more on its civic virtues, higher education can accomplish several goals at once, Ms. Schneider said.
“Employers say, ‘Send us people who are capable of solving difficult problems in teams with people different from themselves,’” she said. Cultivating democratic engagement develops the same skills, she said. The report’s authors also pointed to evidence that students who show higher levels of civic engagement also tend to remain in college and graduate in greater numbers.
“You have a triple-win in sight by investing in the forms of democratic learning we’re talking about,” Ms. Schneider said. “We’ll build capacity for democracy and the economy, and higher rates of college completion.”
