Higher education is failing — and our democracy is suffering 

This commencement season, on some college campuses’ anti-war protestors are finding resolution with administrators, while on other campuses, things remain contentious. The student protest movement is not a monolith. It’s complex and may look different in different places — and depending on one’s viewpoint.

Is it free speech to be protected or punishable bad behavior to be deterred? Is it standing up against violating Palestinians’ human rights or antisemitism? Does it reflect specific objections to policies that can be fixed, or polarization and cancel culture that can’t be appeased? 

It may be useful to think about these questions through the lens of higher education’s function of fostering the next generation of engaged citizens, advocates and leaders. The students who occupied tent camps this year will occupy boardrooms and courtrooms in the years ahead. What core values and core competencies will they need to learn and practice in college? 

We’re in a high-stakes, teachable moment, but we could use more clarity about exactly what should be taught to whom. Passionate dissent about the Israel-Hamas conflict is an accelerant for angst over a perfect storm of big, existential threats students feel, including climate change, democracy teetering on the edge, economic inequality and disruption, artificial intelligence, and much else. 

Higher education plays a critical role in tackling such existential problems, or rather, in preparing students to tackle them. In the U.S., that role has evolved over time in successive waves. 

The first two waves produced small, elite “Greek academies,” founded in the 18^th century, followed by state-chartered colleges and universities that began to enlarge the curriculum beyond Greek and Latin. Subsequently, there emerged the singularly American innovation of land-grant colleges, built on federally owned land and funded by an act of Congress in 1862. They were to be “accessible to all, but especially to the sons of toil,” meaning of farmers and laborers. Instead of just transmitting high culture, they deliberately fostered economic development for all, and were known as “democracy’s colleges.” 

This democracy-building mission was reaffirmed by President Truman’s 1947 Commission on Higher Education, which wrote that the “first and most essential charge upon higher education is that at all levels and in all its fields of specialization, it shall be the carrier of democratic values, ideals, and process.” 

But if that’s the mission, higher education may be failing.  

Only 57 percent of young people (ages 18-35) recently polled in 30 countries believed that democracy is preferable to any other form of government, compared with 71 percent of those over 56. Young people were twice as likely to support military rule. More than a third felt that a “strong leader” who did not hold elections or consult the legislature was “a good way to run a country.” 

To turn this around, educators must grapple anew with the question of how to teach democracy, so that students master both the theory and the hands-on practice of it.   

U.S. colleges and universities increasingly offer channels for students to engage in their communities. This is much more than an exercise in so-called “town-gown” public relations; practicing civic engagement is a crucial part of higher education. Civic engagement is a very powerful way to apply what students have learned in the classroom, to learn to work together across differences to solve community problems. It is an exercise in how to listen to multiple perspectives, persuade, bridge divides and compromise — how to “do democracy.” 

Democracy requires that people who may misunderstand and disagree with each other, even passionately, learn to respect and understand each other, and find a way forward. Teaching and training this ability has traditionally been one of the most important parts of a liberal arts education, but it’s a civic virtue in short supply today. 

The fact that college students are motivated to protest the war in Palestine is in itself a positive marker of civic engagement. Cases where student protestors negotiated with the administration, struck agreements, and the tents and trauma were put away — at least for the time being — are a sign of educational success. Cases where pro-Palestinian protestors and pro-Israel demonstrators clashed with one another or with police, with one or both sides retrenched, are a sign educators have more work to do. 

American college students are often passionate about engaging issues. That’s a resource for democracy that educators should build on, to teach productive, problem-solving, civic engagement to every single student, universally. We need a Civic Engagement Corps. The federal government should help by reaffirming, as it did in 1947, that democracy is higher education’s essential mission, supporting initiatives and sharing best practices. 

As former U.S. congressman, federal judge and White House counsel Abner Mikva said, “Democracy is a verb.” Educators aren’t equipped or entitled to tell students what nouns to choose, what the specific object or content of their civic engagement should be, which position on an issue a right-thinking educated person must adopt as a signal of virtue. But educators are equipped and obligated to teach the thought processes and actions of democracy itself. If nothing else, today’s challenging times and rising stakes are making this clearer.   

This is a teachable moment, and it’s time to teach.    

Margee Ensign, Ph.D., is president of the American University in Bulgaria. Previously she served as president of the United States International University-Africa; as president of Dickinson College; and as president of American University of Nigeria.