the briefing room

This is a guest post by University Affairs editor Peggy Berkowitz.

In the last 25 years, there has been remarkable growth in “civic engagement” on university campuses in the United States, with widespread programs, new associations and foundations to support it. But accompanying this growth in civic engagement courses and programs – in Canada, often called “service learning” – there’s been a sharp decline in political engagement on campuses.

This was the focus of an excellent panel discussion – which I’ll get back to in a moment – during the annual meeting of the Association of American Colleges and Universities held in Washington, D.C. Jan. 25-28. The idea that universities should educate students to be actively engaged in democracy was the central theme of the conference, which attracted more than 2,000 participants, mainly administrators and faculty involved in undergraduate education.

Carol Geary Schneider is president of AAC&U, a large membership organization that supports liberal arts and science education at the undergraduate level. In opening remarks, she referred to the deepening economic divide in the United States that is “leaving more Americans behind.” Noting that in the Civil War and other times of crisis, the U.S. has turned to higher education “to be a carrier of democracy in every sphere,” she asserted that today “higher education should and can play a far more influential role” in policy and the future of the U.S.

In a presidential election year where the level of political debate has depressed many intellectuals, it wasn’t shocking, but still felt a little foreign to a Canadian, to see democracy figure in such a central way at a conference about undergraduate education.

The particular session I found so interesting was the panel entitled “Where is the political in civic engagement?”

Matthew Hartley, associate professor and chair of the department of higher education at the University of Pennsylvania, traced the trajectory of the civic engagement movement, which began in the mid-’80s, a time, like today, where a weak economy was placing financial pressures on colleges and universities. Led by different groups of university presidents, the early movement centred around the idea that “we have failed to provide the education for citizenship that is still the most significant responsibility of the nation’s schools and colleges” (Frank Newman, in an influential 1985 report Higher Education and the American Resurgence).

One of those groups, the Campus Compact, surveyed its 225 members in 1991 and found just 16 percent of their students were involved in service, almost all of it volunteerism; and just 15 percent of these institutions had offices to support this work. Today, the most recent survey by the same group showed 31 percent of students taking part in service-learning courses and service, and 94 percent of member institutions (now numbering 1,100) with an office or centre coordinating these activities… Read More