VaHigherEd.com

Colleges are failing to increase the civic literacy of their students according to this article in USA Today.  A study tested more than 14,000 freshman and senior students at 50 colleges and universities across the nation.  Half of the schools were selective and the other half were randomly choosen.

In general, the better a college’s U.S. News & World Report ranking, the less its civic literacy gain. Yale, with the highest-scoring freshmen (68.94%), along with Princeton, Duke and Cornell, were among eight schools with freshmen outscoring seniors.

The bottom line is that study indicates that students are entering college with little idea about America’s history, the rights we enjoy as Americans or how those rights were established.  Further, it shows that the students learned little or nothing about those subjects while attending their college or university.  And it seems to have made no difference what caliber of school the students attended.

“Several of the colleges at the lower end of our survey are some of the most prestigious in the country, with average tuition, room and board somewhere north of $40,000 a year.  These are the schools, although their stated mission is to help prepare active citizens, that are the most derelict in their responsibility.”

One of the experts quoted in the story says the problem isn’t the quality of the education, but rather it’s focus.

Today’s students have fewer civics requirements as the value of higher education is more often defined in economic terms.  “Less is being expected of secondary and post-secondary education in the way of civic education, and because less is expected, less is achieved,” says William Galston, Brookings Institution senior fellow of governance studies.

So the question remains:  In a nation where fewer and fewer people are even voting, is higher education doing enough to see that we have an informed citizenry - and should they be doing more?

Posted by Jeff Kraus