A report released Tuesday by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute found that, for the most part, America’s colleges and universities do a poor job of teaching students about American history and civic institutions.
Locally, however, North Carolina Central University does fairly well. It was ranked in the top 15 among 50 schools in a survey designed to gauge how much students have learned about American civic history during their college years. NCCU’s students performed better than those surveyed at Appalachian State University, UNC-Chapel Hill, and Duke University.
The report is titled “The Coming Crisis in Citizenship: Higher Education’s Failure to Teach America’s History and Institutions.” Researchers conducted a 60-question, multiple-choice exam to test more than 14,000 freshmen and seniors about their knowledge of history and civics. Seniors only scored 1.5 percent higher, on average, than their freshmen counterparts at their schools.
North Carolina Central ranked 13th among the 50 schools that were studied in the report. Its students improved by 4.8 percent from their freshmen to senior years. NCCU was far and away the best among the four state schools that participated in the study. Appalachian State’s students only gained in knowledge by 1.7 percent, while students at UNC-Chapel Hill only increased knowledge at a rate of 1.6 percent. Appalachian State was ranked 27th and UNC-Chapel Hill was 28th.
As for Duke, its students had a decrease in knowledge, according to the study. Seniors’ scores at Duke were 2.3 percent lower than scores of freshmen. Duke was ranked 46th among the 50 schools, ahead of only Brown University, Cornell University, the University of California-Berkley, and The John Hopkins University.
Rhodes College, a private, liberal arts college in Memphis, Tenn., was ranked as the top school in the survey. Its seniors gained in knowledge at a rate of 11.6 percent. Other schools finishing among the top five in the survey were Colorado State (10.9 percent increase), Calvin College (9.5 percent), Grove City College (9.4 percent), and the University of Colorado-Boulder (8.9 percent).
Pope Center Vice President George Leef said North Carolina Central’s size is among the reason why it fared better than some of the larger institutions in the UNC system.
“The smaller schools in the UNC system are much stronger in their general education requirements than the large ones,” Leef said. “NCCU requires its students to take the kinds of colleges that have been the pillars of a college education. In contrast, UNC-Chapel Hill offers its students a vast array of courses they can take to fulfill their general education requirements. It’s easy to see how many of them could sail through their years without learning much about our history, political institutions, or economy.”
Besides finding saying that colleges are doing a poor job teaching history and civics, the study’s authors also make other findings. They say that prestige doesn’t mean better education. Some of the top institutions, according to the U.S. News and World Report’s rankings, were outside of the top 10, including Harvard at No. 25. (Their students may have scored higher on the tests than students at other schools but the survey shows that colleges didn’t add much, if at all, to their civic education.) The study also found that knowledge decreases when fewer courses on history, political science, government and economics are taken.
“Students who demonstrated greater learning of America’s history and institutions, were more engaged in citizenship activities such as voting, volunteer community service, and political campaigns,” the study says.
To address these problems, the report makes five recommendations, including improved assessment of learning outcomes at colleges and universities. Other recommendations include increasing the number of required history, political science, and economic courses, holding higher education institutions more accountable, provide more information on college performance in teaching history and civics, and building centers on campus to support the restoration of teaching American history, political science and economics.
“To maintain and strengthen our republic, our college youth must learn about America’s history and institutions in order to engage in their duties and obligations as citizens in a democracy,” the report says.