While there is a broad understanding that participating in higher education leads to increased levels of civic participation, conflicting narratives exist about this link.
So, Ithaka S+R, a research organization that promotes student success and access to higher education, and the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) teamed up to compile standing research on postsecondary institutions and civic engagement to find out what is really going on behind the scenes.
In their landscape review, “Assessing the Civic Campus: The Link Between Higher Education and Democracy,” researchers made a series of connections and produced new questions for future work. One important discovery they highlight is the fact that, when students are more civically engaged, they have a better academic persistence and retention.
Dr. Terry Brown, vice president of academic innovation and transformation at AASCU.
Perhaps most interestingly of all, despite students displaying a similar interest in learning about civic engagement when they begin college, preliminary findings of this research suggests that fewer science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses offer civic pedagogical instruction, resulting in STEM majors being less civically engaged than students who study humanities or social sciences.
“It’s an opportunity to think about what co-curricular integration can look like,” said Dr. Ioana G. Hulbert, a researcher at Ithaka S+R and one of the authors of the study. “It’s also a matter of whether it makes sense with the institutional mission, in alignment with public or social good — if civic engagement is also a part of that mission — multiple departments and fields can think about how they want to integrate that in their offerings.”
Brown agreed and added that this study should prompt a lot of questions for institutional leaders and researchers.
