What is the Post-Election Way Forward for the College Civic Learning and Democracy Engagement Movement?
A November 2024 Message from the Civic Learning and Democracy Engagement Coalition Staff: Carol Schneider, Siah Annand, Richard Freeland, Martha Kanter, David Paris, Nancy Shapiro, and Carol-lynn Swol
It was always a given that, whichever way the presidential election worked out, the country would be profoundly polarized over the result. And so, it is no surprise that there is enormous elation on one side, and enormous unhappiness on the other.
Yet this is only the latest in a series of whiplash “it’s time for radical change” elections.
Consider the presidential elections in 2008, 2016, 2020, and now 2024. In each case the electorate voted for a president who would chart a dramatically different way forward from that of his predecessor. But in each case, as Gallup studies show, the great majority of the electorate remained deeply unhappy with the resulting (re)direction of the country. Americans are voting their discontents, but their unhappiness persists—and the polarization we all live with is a part of that dissatisfaction.
We who work with the CLDE Coalition and its several scaling initiatives have had to ask: what does the election outcome mean for the civic learning and democracy engagement movement?
Our conclusion: the road ahead is undoubtedly more complex. But the nation’s divisions and discontents only reinforce the importance of the actions the CLDE Coalition recommended to higher education in our September 2024 publication: Every Student, Every Degree: College Civic Learning for Today’s Students and Tomorrow’s Democracy.
Every Student, Every Degree opened with a warning that Americans are losing faith that democracy works for them, and that younger Americans in particular are dissatisfied with the way the government works and pessimistic about the outlook for democracy. The Coalition could, in fact, have written an entire report on this point. But our colleagues at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) had already explored youth disengagement from civic participation in a 2024 study, Assessing the Civic Campus, that is well worth your reading.
Instead, the CLDE Coalition’s report posed a very practical question: with democracy deeply divided and Americans increasingly skeptical that democracy works for ordinary people, what should higher education do? Here is our answer—which was urgent in September and is even more important in this post-election season:
With “the future of democracy itself one of the world’s most important questions,” the CLDE Coalition is calling on higher education “to reclaim and revitalize its partnership with US democracy.” This means ensuring that civic learning and democracy engagement should become—like communication skills and quantitative reasoning—an expected component of the college curriculum. A democracy led by “we the people” requires no less.
Every Student, Every Degree then went on to describe the key components of democracy-intentional college learning: Democracy Knowledge and Levers for Change; Bridge-Building and Problem-Solving; Practical Experience and Projects; and Career-Related Civic and Ethical Learning. (Find a single page printable version of the full CLDE Framework here.)
If Civic Learning for All is the Goal, How Well Is Higher Education Doing?
Every Student, Every Degree is, in principle, an inclusive call to action because the report calls for all postsecondary students to participate in forms of civic learning that prepare them to “make their own decisions about how they want to contribute to the public good beyond college.”
And yet, if educators use the CLDE Framework to ask how many postsecondary students are gaining civic knowledge, skills and experiences in college, the answer will be: only some.
The majority of today’s postsecondary students go through higher education—in the world’s most powerful democracy—spending no time at all on their role in that democracy. And this in turn means that it is high time for higher education to confront the deep disparities within its own boundaries.
Every Student, Every Degree shows some of these disparities in stark detail. “Almost Eight in Ten Community College Students Never Experience Service Learning,” the report points out, with service learning defined as a course that includes a community-based project. Yet elsewhere, the report provides evidence that when students do participate in service learning, the boost to their practical, civic, and ethical learning and to their likelihood of completion is impressive.
Conversely, the report observes that nearly six in ten seniors in four-year institutions have had one or more courses in which they worked on a community-based project. But four in ten went through an entire degree never working on a single community-based project.
These documented service-learning disparities point toward a larger and more pervasive inequity which too many take for granted: the current practice of steering many low-income and first-generation students toward narrower forms of postsecondary learning.
These narrower programs—typically called “career and technical programs and certificates”—often have few or none of what most educated people regard as core general education experiences: writing courses, humanities courses, global studies courses, and courses that help students explore both the social systems and the physical systems that shape and influence their world.
Typically, when an institution decides to embed civic learning into the curriculum, the faculty start first with their general education program. But the current reality is that many career and technical colleges long ago set upper limits on general education courses—15 hours altogether—while many career programs and certificates include no broad learning experiences at all. None. Not even a writing course.
Narrow learning for the many and big picture, public-spirited learning for the fortunate? This is the very essence of unequal opportunity. And it is a problem we will need to solve if we want to help college students—all college students—explore and claim their own role in the world’s most powerful democracy.
Create Spiraled Pathways That Combine Civic and Career Learning
But, you may be asking, our institution (or state system, or both) is working energetically on “student success.” The goal is to help students complete college as rapidly and efficiently as possible so they can secure good jobs. Won’t it slow students down if educators add additional CLDE studies to their programs?
The answer is that many institutions already are pioneering spiraled pathways for powerful learning, with students combining career-related studies and broad public-spirited learning from first to final year. These pathways embed civic inquiry and projects in general education courses (e.g., a required social studies course) and in high-impact practices (HIPs) such as practicums or research that students already must complete to earn their degrees. These redesigned spiraled pathways also let students get started on their career interests right away, by connecting general education pathways that include civic inquiry directly to students’ intended field of study. And often—especially in career-related fields, these spiraled pathways require community-facing courses and ethical studies as part of their majors.
The Sample Guided Pathways included in Every Student, Every Degree show different ways of braiding broad, career-related and civic learning together from the first semester of college to the student’s completion of the program. They also show ways of making practice in constructive civil discourse an expected competency for all postsecondary learners.
These redesigned pathways through the college curriculum are designed to better serve today’s students. Leaders interested in strengthening college civic learning should study and learn from these innovative new directions.
Embrace—and Live Up to—Higher Education’s Populist Commitments
And as we take these steps—crafting CLDE-intentional educational pathways designed to include all students and all fields of study—investing in CLDE-related learning will help higher education respond directly to yet another concern of the post-election dialogue: the strong reaction against elites and elitism.
There has indeed been much post-election discussion of Americans’ revolt “against elites”—with many flagging higher education as very much a part of that “elite.” But if we look realistically at the question of who is actually going to college these days, it becomes clear that higher education is—for most learners and most institutions—a populist enterprise.
As a new report from Complete College America (CCA is one of the CLDE Coalition’s five Lead Partners) points out, only about seven percent of all college students study in the “elite institutions” characterized by highly selective admissions, and often the highest costs as well. The great majority of today’s college students are what one of us has called “Opportunity Learners” – students who hope to improve their life circumstances through study beyond high school.
The majority of these Opportunity Learners enroll in broad access institutions—regional and local two-and four-year institutions that see it as their mission to make education widely available to all who seek it, and to serve as engines of opportunity and social mobility for students and communities that most need a leg up.
Yet the media almost never covers such institutions, focusing instead on the small segment of highly selective and expensive institutions as though they were fully representative of higher education as a whole.
Further, as we can see from the CLDE Coalition team’s work to identify “Full Participation Institutions” (FPIs) where civic learning already is required for the degree, it is broad access institutions (and Catholic mission institutions as well) that are most likely to have pioneered ways to bring civic learning—classroom based and experiential—into their degree requirements.
A glance through the list of FPIs that CLDE Coalition team members are compiling reveals that few of the nation’s “elite institutions” currently make civic learning a requirement to earn a degree. But the list includes nearly 100 examples of extraordinarily diverse institutions—faithfully serving Opportunity Learners—that already have taken this step. They have acted to include all, not just some, of their students in the kinds of learning that engage students with the wider society and help them make choices about how they want to participate in democratic community.
Listen to Students’ Views on the Problems Democracy Needs to Solve
The Every Student, Every Degree call to action begins with listening to our own students—those majority Opportunity Learners who have chosen higher education as their path to a better future. Specifically: the report recommends that democracy studies should provide today’s students with meaningful time—perhaps in a first year required communications course or another required unit—to explore with other students what their own experiences in U.S. democracy have been. And to explore the problems that different students believe this democracy needs to solve.
Every Student, Every Degree says further that students deserve to know that almost any issue they really care about—whether it is poverty, literacy, sustainability, mental health, community safety, freedom movements, or the economics of opportunity—can be studied through the college curriculum.
CLDE-related studies should go well beyond “just learning about.” The most powerful forms of learning—now called high-impact practices or HIPs—are empowering because they ask students to apply their learning to complex, unscripted questions and projects—and to reflect with others on the results of those applications.
College, in sum, can and should prepare all students to take action on issues that matter to them, and to learn how to evaluate the likely consequences of their actions, for themselves and for the wider community. But students’ efforts to take action should be anchored in civil and productive dialogue, practiced early and often within the curriculum, with faculty well prepared to shepherd these discussions.
Work to Align Civic Learning with Student Success and Democracy’s Success
Every Student, Every Degree points out that—again against the media narrative—a majority of the nation’s population has in fact earned either a four-year degree, a two-year degree, or a credential with value in the economy. (1) If we add in the 40 million adults who have some college but no degree, the fraction of the US population that has spent time in higher education rises to about seven out of ten adults. But, as our CCA colleagues point out in their new report, when students borrow to attend college and then decide they cannot continue, they may well end up joining the big part of the population which believes that our society is “rigged” against them.
Suppose, however, that those same students had spent credit-bearing time in college working on issues that really mattered to them? The research is compelling that their chances of staying in school would have notably improved.
Civic learning is, in short, good for student success. It also brings new talent and creativity to democracy’s success. Today, when the direction and shape of “tomorrow’s democracy” is very much on the line, every student who enrolls in college deserves a chance to explore both the meaning, the evolution, and the potential of the opening words of the Constitution: “We the people… do ordain and establish….”
As the founders knew, education and liberty are intertwined. K-12 education is an important part of that needed education, but so too is higher education, especially when higher education provides students with meaningful opportunities to work on issues they care about, to engage perspectives different from their own, to test solutions in real-world contexts, and to develop new capacities to create solutions for the future.
Make Practical Problem-Solving Part of the College Curriculum
So, what should higher education do this year? It is time, we believe, to lean into what Every Student, Every Degree calls “Bridge-Building” and “Problem-Solving.”
As we suggest above, bridge-building means taking the time to talk together, across our many differences, about the problems plaguing US democracy and the communities in which our students live. But practicing constructive or civil discourse in required courses is only the beginning. Democracy is a way of solving problems together, and that is why the CLDE Learning Framework deliberately links Bridge-Building with Problem-Solving, and with all the components of a liberating education that go into both.
Across higher education, conversations continue about the election and what it means for the future. Educators now need to expand that dialogue so that it encompasses “tomorrow’s democracy,” and not just the last or next campaign.
In courses that students complete for credit, ask students to commit to talking with one another and with those guiding their studies and courses. Ask them to consider, together and across a range of very different views, what they want “tomorrow’s democracy to be and what actions they might take to help us get there. And then provide opportunities, within the college curriculum, for students to work collaboratively with others on practical problems and projects, and to reflect with others on what they learned from these problem-solving experiences.
And, as we do this, highlight the evidence, also featured in Every Student, Every Degree, that employers prefer graduates who include practical, hands-on problem-solving experiences as part of their degrees. Strengthening the problem-solving parts of our curricula will be good for career success as well as democracy’s success.
Adopt Inclusive Excellence as Democracy’s North Star
Finally, as we engage students in explorations of “tomorrow’s democracy,” educators need to commit to providing all students, not just honors students, with the kinds of learning that build capacity to create innovative solutions.
Or to put it differently, it is high time to drop the continuing equation of “excellence” with “elitism.” As AAC&U, another Lead Partner in the CLDE Coalition, began urging almost twenty years ago, educators’ vision for the future needs to become one of “inclusive excellence.”
Working together, higher education can chart a new direction for this constitutional democracy that takes pride in providing “excellence for everyone” across the entirety of postsecondary education. And, because we are educating students to take constructive, engaged roles in a free society, educational leaders should take determined action to ensure that civic learning and democracy engagement become core components of this new direction.
As Every Student, Every Degree concludes, “Democracy will flourish when college study prepares all…students, across all areas of study, to ‘act with others to improve the quality of life for all.’”
--------------------------
So how should higher education respond to this fraught moment in our history? Step up and visibly engage today’s students with democracy’s principles, histories, and future, and with the many problems our society needs to solve.
We who work on behalf of the CLDE Coalition trust that is a commitment on which all sides can agree.
Notably, the media narrative about college-educated voters includes only BA/BS holders in that group, and therefore describes the college-educated as an “elite” minority. This misses the progress educators have already made in providing postsecondary credentials to over 50 percent of the adult population. Higher education should work much harder to help the media redefine what counts as “postsecondary learning.”