In the aftermath of World War II, President Harry Truman convened a presidential commission on the role of American colleges and universities. Truman wanted to explore the potential for higher education to “strengthen democracy,” he said . The commission was significant in that it was the first presidential commission on education in American history, and it resulted in a thick report titled “Higher Education for American Democracy.” The report concluded that “the first and most essential charge upon higher education is that at all levels and in its fields of specialization, it shall be the carrier of democratic values, ideals, and process.”

Unfortunately, as Johns Hopkins University President Ronald Daniels wrote in his 2021 book What Universities Owe Democracy , “a democratic education touching all the pillars of good citizenship — knowledge, skills, values, and aspirations — has time and again failed to gain traction in American higher education.”

The reasons for this decline in college-level civics are numerous. Perhaps most consequentially, many tend to see education as little more than job training. Advancing career prospects for graduates and sparking dynamism in the economy have tended to trump the humanistic and civic purposes the Truman Commission called “the most essential charge” of higher education. The focus is on making students productive consumers in the economy rather than engaged citizens in the republic.

One attempt to provide balance has been various efforts to encourage civic engagement through service learning, from promoting community volunteerism to training students to be policy activists and lobbyists. Such initiatives have become the “dominant paradigm for civic education” in higher education, according to Daniels. Unfortunately, these efforts fail to make up for the lack of civic-minded curricula and can often be ideologically tainted.

Indeed, even as they promote service learning, universities have neglected “a knowledge of democratic history and political institutions.” Even the disciplines we might associate with civic learning, such as political science and history, are less concerned with the intellectual foundations of citizenship. “As the years passed, the social sciences and humanities beat a steady retreat from their civic aspirations by turning their focus inward, seeking to grow their disciplines through the training of future generations of scholars and a focus on academic research,” Daniels writes.

This emphasis on service-learning, to the exclusion of a fuller civic education, undermines trust in our colleges and universities. Whether fair or not, many see service learning as a politicized approach to civics instruction. And higher education really cannot afford to lose the trust of more people.

One need only look at a recent Gallup poll . The percentage of the public who have confidence in higher education has fallen to 36% from 57% in 2015 and those with “very little” confidence has more than doubled in that time. It is in the interest of all colleges and universities to reverse this trend.

Fortunately, a growing number of university presidents such as Daniels, along with a rising movement of higher education stakeholders, are leading the way to a new era of civic learning on America’s campuses. Under Daniels’s presidency, Johns Hopkins launched the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Agora Institute that exists in part to “contest values and ideas that form the foundation of pluralistic democracy.” Another shining example is that of Purdue University, which, under the presidency of another Daniels, former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, instituted a graduation requirement that students take civics coursework and pass a civic literacy exam.

A second, and more recent development, is the rise of larger schools for civic thought at public universities — new academic units within state institutions of higher learning with their own degrees and tenure-granting authority that are devoted to teaching the foundational knowledge of American citizenship. Such units represent an expansion of dozens of centers that have developed on university campuses over the last two decades to offer education in the foundational civics texts and ideas.

The first of these new state-authorized and funded schools was Arizona State University’s School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership , or SCETL, which was a direct result of public pressure to invest in civics at the university level around 2016. Since then, state lawmakers have approved funding for similar centers and institutes at places such as the University of Tennessee Knoxville , the University of Texas Austin , the University of Florida , and Utah Valley University .

The Institute of American Civics at UT Knoxville is now being formed “to provide a comprehensive civic education for university undergraduates and the state at large, including America’s founding principles, the economic and political institutions that maintain American democracy and the basics of civic engagement,” according to its website. More institutes like this are likely on the way in the wake of pending state budgets and legislative sessions.

Such schools, centers, and institutes are poised to strengthen civics beyond the confines of the Ivory Tower. SCETL, for example, was a principal in the development of the Educating for American Democracy road map and is a consultant with the Arizona State Board of Education on overhauling the state’s civics standards. The Civic Thought and Leadership Initiative at Utah Valley University likewise is tasked with fostering “thoughtful civic engagement in Utah and the surrounding region” and hosts workshops and conferences for K-12 teachers as well as direct student outreach.

To be sure, we can expect opposition to this renaissance in civics education. Universities are infamously resistant to change, and it will take considerable energy to integrate fundamental civic knowledge into university curricula. But the remarkable efforts now underway from Indianapolis to Tempe, and from Newport News to Orem, provide hope for the future — and a worthy cause for the support of university donors, taxpayers, and alumni.

Hans Zeiger is president of the Jack Miller Center (www.jackmillercenter.org), a nationwide network of scholars and teachers who work to advance the core texts and ideas of the American political tradition. Thomas Kelly, J.D. is vice president of civics initiatives at the Jack Miller Center.