Confronting a Civic Recession: Data from A Crucible Moment: College Learning and Democracy’s Future

In January 2012, AAC&U and the Global Perspective Institute, Inc. released the report A Crucible Moment: College Learning and Democracy’s Future. The report, commissioned by the US Department of Education and released at a January 10 White House event, reflects input from a series of national routable participants and describes the “civic recession” currently facing the United States. It articulates new steps forward to make civic and democratic learning pervasive rather than peripheral in the college curriculum in student life.

In response to the troubling lack of civic engagement in the United States, A Crucible Moment calls for “investing on a massive scale in higher education’s capacity to renew this nation’s social, intellectual, and civic capital.” Doing so will require making civic learning and democratic engagement an expected part of every student’s college learning. The report draws on numerous sources of data, including the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education, the 2010 National Assessment of Educational Progress assessment of civics, and “Guardian of Democracy,” a report from the Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools.

Civics Education in K–12

• Half of US states no longer require civics education for high school graduation.
• Only 24 percent of high school seniors scored at the proficient or advanced level on a national civics exam in 2010.
• Less than half of high school seniors reported studying international topics in civics, and only two-thirds reported studying important domestic topics such as the US Constitution, Congress, the court system, or elections.

Civic and Democratic Engagement on College Campuses

• Nearly 60 percent of college seniors—and almost half of all college students—surveyed in 2009 indicated they believed contributing to the community should be a focus of college. However, only 38 percent of seniors believed their colleges actually focused on this goal.
• According to the same survey, only slightly more than one third of college seniors felt their civic awareness had been expanded during their time in college.
• Another study indicates fewer than 40 percent of college students engage in any of several learning practices that correlate with gains in civic learning.

Civic Participation in the American Public

• The United States ranked 139th out of 172 world democracies in voter participation in 2007.
• Only 10 percent of Americans contacted a public official in 2010.
• Despite this apparent lack of civic engagement, individual Americans contribute more time and money to those in need than citizens of any other nation, according to a recent Gallup poll.

A full PDF of A Crucible Moment: College Learning and Democracy’s Future can be downloaded here.

DID YOU KNOW?

• Among fourteen thousand college seniors who took the Intercollegiate Studies Institute civic literacy exam, the average score was just over 50 percent—an “F.”
• Racial gaps persist in scores on civic literary exams, with white students continuing to outperform black and Hispanic students.
• In one survey of US adults, one-third of respondents couldn’t name all three branches of the US government, and one-third could not name any.

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