Abstract
Educational attainment measured by years of education has been widely reported as leading to higher levels of political participation. The theory is that education plays an important role in a person’s civic skills and cognitive capacity that helps them understand and connect with the world of politics and be able to defend their interests (Nie et al. 1996). However, a number of studies argue that education has no effect on political engagement as educational attainment has been identified as a proxy for socioeconomic background and cognitive ability. In order to examine whether the university has an effect on young people’s intentions for active citizenship in England, hybrid cumulative logit models are used in the Citizenship Education Longitudinal Study (CELS) 2009–2014 with between and within effects which help explain differences between individuals and within individuals at different time points. Control measures of previous citizenship education are also included in the analysis. We find that the university has a positive independent effect on intentions to vote, a negative effect on intentions to volunteer, but not on intentions to protest in the future for young people in England. These findings help clarify the role of higher education (HE) in developing and maintaining democracy and social cohesion.
Highlights
There is a considerable amount of literature that shows the connections between education and political engagement or democracy (Milligan et al 2004; Pattie et al 2004)
Herrnstein and Murray (1994, 235) argue that ‘education predicts political involvement in America because it is primarily a proxy for cognitive ability’. All these studies mainly focused on political participation, voting, while our study extends to active citizenship
Two lines are plotted with dots: The solid lines represent the intentions of young people who have already obtained the university degree while the dashed lines describe the intentions of young people who have not gone to universities; the dots indicate the young people’s intentions in three time points
Summary
There is a considerable amount of literature that shows the connections between education and political engagement or democracy (Milligan et al 2004; Pattie et al 2004). There is limited research on the particular effect of higher education (HE) on diverse forms of engagement (Veugelers et al 2014). Recent changes in HE have positioned universities centrally within market capitalism (Brown 2013) These changes include the rise in tuition fees and greater student choice (Brown 2013). Universities in this context have to prove their economic value to students in particular in terms of employability and student satisfaction (Brown 2013). In the UK, the role of HE in enhancing democracy and social cohesion has been historically neglected (Annette 2010), and this paper will establish with greater clarity the role universities are currently playing on young people’s intentions to participate politically and civically
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