Cracks in the Bedrock of American Democracy: Differences in Civic Engagement Across Institutions of Higher Education

Abstract

Preparing educated and active citizens is one of the primary goals of higher education, yet colleges and universities may neglect civic engagement due to the prioritization of labor market preparation. Drawing on neoinstitutional theory, this paper examines the missions, infrastructure, activities, and outcomes related to civic engagement across postsecondary institutional characteristics. By combining several data sources on a diverse set of institutions, we empirically demonstrate institutional isomorphism with respect to civic engagement mission and decoupling of mission from infrastructure and activities. Our most striking finding is that a residential student population is strongly associated with an increased emphasis on civic engagement even after controlling for institutional control, selectivity, research funding, and student services spending. Given the growing number of students attending nonresidential institutions, this finding has important implications for whether higher education is an effective instrument for preparing civically engaged citizens in our society.

Keywords

civic engagement colleges content analysis descriptive analysis postsecondary education regression analyses

Preparing citizens to participate in our democratic society is one of the chief purposes of American education (Labaree, 1997; Lagemann & Lewis, 2012; Lawry, Laurison, & VanAntwerpen, 2006; National Task Force on Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement, 2012; Sax, 2004). This is true not only at the primary and secondary levels but also in higher education. In the founding documents of the University of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson included among the purposes of higher education “to instruct the mass of our citizens in . . . their rights, interests and duties, as men and citizens” and “to form the statesmen, legislators and judges, on whom public prosperity and individual happiness are so much to depend” (Jefferson et al., 1818, p. 11). Two hundred years later, most universities believe educating citizens and preparing civic leaders are important goals (Colby, Ehrlich, Beaumont, & Stephens, 2003).

Despite the civic purpose of colleges and universities, postsecondary policy discussions have prioritized private labor market outcomes over public benefits. For example, former North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory stated university funding should not be “based on butts in seats, but on how many of those butts can get jobs” (Cohen, 2016, p. B1). Students, and the college marketing materials that lure them to campus, are increasing focus on labor market preparation (Hartley & Morphew, 2008; Lozano & Tilman, 2016; Pryor et al., 2012; Saichaie & Morphew, 2014). Compounding the issue is the growth in online higher education, which offers less social interaction (Chen, Gonyea, & Kuh, 2008), potentially leading to less civic engagement (Grillo, Teixeira, & Wilson, 2010). These changes suggest a higher education landscape in which civic engagement has taken a backseat to preparation for the labor market.

The extent to which the public mission has been superseded by private benefits likely varies across institutions, and our goal is to identify the institutional characteristics related to prioritizing civic engagement in postsecondary education. Our research question is: Are there differences in institutional missions, infrastructures, activities, and outcomes related to civic engagement across types of institutions? We specifically consider differences between public and private, research and liberal arts, and residential and commuter institutions. Neoinstitutional theory drives our institutional analysis, enabling us to consider the isomorphism of institutional missions and infrastructures and empirically investigate the extent of decoupling between mission, infrastructures, and activities. According to neoinstitutional theory, institutionalized ideas pressure organizations to adopt similar goals and structures, a process called isomorphism (Boxenbaum & Jonsson, 2008; DiMaggio & Powell, 1983). Because formal structures loosely couple to the activities of organizations (Meyer & Rowan, 1977), we observe a decoupling, or disconnect, between organizational mission and structures that enhance legitimacy and organizational activities that enhance efficiency (Boxenbaum & Jonsson, 2008; Meyer & Rowan, 1977).

To answer our research question, we used a unique data set drawn from multiple sources of data on a diverse set of 275 institutions of higher education. We conducted a content analysis of institutional mission statements, examined civic engagement office websites, and incorporated civic engagement outcome data from the Washington Monthly college rankings, including national measures of service recognition, Peace Corp volunteerism, and ROTC participation. We compared these measures across different types of institutions.

To ensure the results were driven by neither our sample nor other correlates of civic engagement, we supplemented our initial data set with Integrated Postsecondary Education System (IPEDS) data from over 1,100 institutions and conducted a multiple regression analysis to identify important institutional predictors of civic engagement.

In accordance with institutional isomorphism and decoupling, we found few civic engagement differences across institutional mission but large differences in infrastructures, activities, and outcomes. The most notable finding is that residential campuses focus on civic engagement more than commuter campuses even after controlling for student expenditures, size, and selectivity. This finding may explain why students at residential institutions are generally more engaged in their campuses (Zhao & Kuh, 2004): Their institutions provide many more opportunities to become civically engaged. This finding has broad implications for modern higher education. As more enrollees pursue nonresidential postsecondary education, such as online learning, we must consider how best to provide civic education opportunities to these students.

Review of the Literature

Perspectives on civic engagement have evolved over the past several decades. During the 1980s, institutions focused primarily on community service, but service and academic study became integrated into service-learning courses in the 1990s (Saltmarsh, 2005). More recently, Finley (2011) and Jacoby (2009) argue that modern civic engagement should extend beyond apolitical involvement in the community and intentionally foster democratic skill-building. Although many institutions have rebranded their service offices as offices of civic engagement, most have not changed their programs and services to include political involvement or broader civic engagement activities (Jacoby, 2009).

Prior Research on Civic Engagement

Much of the prior literature on civic engagement is theoretical, discussing definitions and conceptions of civic knowledge and engagement (e.g., Finley, 2011; Hatcher, 2011; Jacoby, 2009). The empirical literature considers both student-centered and institution-focused research. Student-centered research includes studies of student experiences, engagement in programming and courses, and civic engagement outcomes (Beaumont, Colby, Ehrlich, & Torney-Purta, 2006; Bowman, 2011; Bureau, Cole, & McCormick, 2014; Hillygus, 2005; Li & Frieze, 2016; McFarland & Thomas, 2006; Nie & Hillygus, 2001; O’Leary, 2014; Seider, Gillmor, & Rabinowicz, 2012).

However, fewer studies focus on institutional predictors of civic engagement. Relying on student survey data in the 1980s and 1990s from 209 four-year colleges, Sax (2004) used regression to examine the effects of college environment on civic engagement outcomes. She found campus commitment to social activism had a positive association with students’ commitment to social activism and community involvement after college. More recently, Barnhardt, Sheets, and Pasquesi (2015) demonstrated that institutional characteristics were related to students’ self-assessments of their commitment and skills to change society. Campus size and selectivity were negatively associated with students’ reported commitments to the larger community, but activities such as participation in service and community-based projects in coursework were positively associated with the two outcomes. These studies confirm that campus characteristics are related to students’ civic engagement, but their measures, outcomes, and samples are limited.

We also build on prior studies of mission statements. Many analyses have focused on the general purpose of mission statements (Checkoway, 2001; Hartley, 2002), but we consider differences in mission across institutions. While several have analyzed mission statements within institutional types (Delucchi, 2000; Taylor & Morphew, 2010), Morphew and Hartley (2006) is the only empirical paper we know of that analyzed patterns of difference across institutional types. We build on these studies by analyzing differences across a greater array of institution types.

Few studies have focused explicitly on civic engagement infrastructure. In a qualitative study, Ostrander (2004) considered organizational infrastructures of civic engagement across five campuses and concluded that two structural features (establishing a formal partnership and providing partnership staffing) help build successful relationships between institutions and their communities. Bringle and Hatcher (2000) used survey responses from 179 institutions to document that having a central office devoted to service-learning is associated with increased institutionalization of service-learning among multiple constituencies. Holland (1997) analyzed institutional commitment to service by collecting data on several organizational factors at 42 institutions and subsequently produced a matrix of levels of commitment to service. We extend these efforts to a larger set of institutions and a broader definition of civic engagement.

Specifically considering the residential/commuter campus divide, prior literature has examined residential components of civic education such as living-learning communities (Rowan-Kenyon, Soldner, & Kurotsuchi Inkelas, 2007) and suggested that providing academic credit for service-learning at commuter institutions is important to promote involvement (Bringle & Hatcher, 1996). Bringle and Hatcher (2000) considered whether commuter institutions had a greater institutionalization of service-learning than residential campuses, finding evidence that commuter institutions offer service-learning opportunities that many students do not take up. Our study improves on these important prior works by examining the breadth of civic engagement opportunities available to students at residential campuses versus commuter campuses beyond living learning communities and service-learning and across a wider range of institutions.

Contributions

Our paper extends the extant literature on institutional predictors of civic engagement in several important ways. Unlike civic engagement studies that solely examine mission, infrastructure, or activities, we consider measures of all three aspects while investigating in-college and postgraduate civic outcomes. We include entirely new measures to the civic engagement literature, and our extensive data collection combines never before merged data from mission statements, websites, IPEDS, and the Washington Monthly, enabling analysis of more objective and representative measures than survey self-reports. We also use a larger sample of diverse institutions (our regression analysis contains more than 1,100 colleges) than exists in the literature. Our regression analysis facilitates a more accurate estimate of the relationship between factors such as residency with civic engagement outcomes by controlling for critical institutional characteristics, such as student services spending, that may have biased previous studies. By incorporating democratic participation and military service, we take a broader view of civic engagement, providing enhanced content validity relative to prior studies. Given the changes in higher education generally and civic engagement specifically, we provide additional value with data collected in the 2010s. Finally, our application of neoinstitutional theory enables an empirical analysis of isomorphism and decoupling.

Theoretical Framework

The neoinstitutional theory of isomorphism suggests institutions will follow similar goals and create similar structures in their search for legitimacy (Boxenbaum & Jonsson, 2008; DiMaggio & Powell, 1983). Isomorphism is well documented in many areas of higher education, including the consistency of academic departments (Frank & Gabler, 2006), faculty time allocation (Milem, Berger, & Dey, 2000), and administrative functions with national associations such as student affairs professionals (Levinson, 1989). Specific to civic engagement, Lounsbury and Pollack (2001) have considered how shifting logics within the field enabled service-learning to become legitimate practice. Our empirical analysis examines whether evidence of isomorphism exists in civic engagement beyond service-learning by considering the three different types of isomorphism, mimetic, normative, and coercive (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983), and examining differences in mission statements, infrastructure, activities, and outcomes across private/public, research/liberal arts, and residential/commuter divides.

Mimetic isomorphism occurs as organizations model themselves after similar organizations in their industry perceived to be more legitimate. Institutional mission statements, as opposed to operational activities, tend to reflect the most prominent models (Delucchi, 2000). Similar mission statements across institutions might be due to mimetic isomorphism as less prestigious institutions adopt civic engagement missions mimicking those of more legitimate institutions. While we consider mimetic isomorphism by comparing mission statements across institutional types, we cannot identify which institutions are being copied and therefore leave a direct test of mimetic isomorphism to future research.

Normative isomorphism, or professionalization of the field, may also drive the homogenization of civic engagement across institutions. Civic engagement practitioners have their own academic journals, administrative titles, and conferences, suggesting normative isomorphism pressures institutions to join the same professional networks and seek similar civic outcomes. We investigate normative isomorphism by tracking membership in Campus Compact, the President’s Service Honor Roll, and the community engagement Carnegie classification because these distinctions arose from the field’s professionalization.

Coercive isomorphism may also encourage the homogenization of higher education. Federal law coerces institutions to make ROTC programs available to students by reserving the right to withhold federal funding from institutions that do not. Additionally, states incentivize job placement and workforce preparation through funding formulae that prioritize labor market outcomes over civic outcomes. While we do not empirically test coercive isomorphism, we believe the evidence presented previously illustrates its influence.

Neoinstitutional theory also suggests the prevalence of decoupling of stated priorities, structural elements, and activities (Meyer & Rowan, 1977). Decoupling enables an organization to achieve legitimacy through mission and structure while remaining efficient in action and responsive to multiple constituencies and pressures (Boxenbaum & Jonsson, 2008). This phenomenon exists in higher education; institutions establish goals and structures without engaging in the activities associated with those goals and structures (Meyer, Ramirez, Frank, & Schofer, 2008; Ramirez & Christensen, 2013).

We empirically investigate whether decoupling in civic engagement differs across types of institutions by examining heterogeneity in mission, infrastructure, and activities across institutional characteristics. If differences in decoupling exist across institutions, we would expect to see the disconnect between mission and infrastructure/activities vary by institutional characteristics. If isomorphism drives institutions to have similar civic engagement goals and decoupling differs across institutions, we would expect to see minor differences in mission statements but larger differences in infrastructures and civic engagement activities on campus and hence, larger differences in subsequent civic engagement outcomes.

Our hypotheses are as follows. We expect public universities to place greater emphasis on civic engagement in their missions because the founding goal of many public institutions was to improve the development of civic society. For example, the Morrill Act changed the mission of public higher education as land grant institutions explicitly focused on democratic engagement (Weerts, 2016), and nearly half of the public research institutions in our sample are land grant institutions. Research universities may place less emphasis on civic engagement in favor of a greater focus on research, and because some scholars argue a liberal arts curriculum results in greater civic engagement (Hillygus, 2005; Labaree, 1997), liberal arts colleges may place a greater focus on civic engagement. Finally, because of differences in student life resources for building civic capacity, we expect residential institutions to have greater investment in civic engagement infrastructures and activities.

Defining and Operationalizing Civic Engagement

There is little consensus in defining civic engagement (Finley, 2011; Jacoby, 2009; Rowan-Kenyon et al., 2007). It is a complex construct with multiple dimensions, and, as documented by Saltmarsh and Hartley (2011), has evolved over time. In the 1970s and 1980s, “civic engagement” referred predominantly to student volunteerism. Academic faculty became more involved with civic engagement in the 1990s as the term transitioned to include service-learning. It was only after research showed few effects of service-learning on democratic engagement that university presidents began to discuss civic engagement in democratic terms. Today, the term civic engagement increasingly incorporates democratic engagement, although institutions may still view service as their primary civic mission.

In accordance with the modern interpretation, we view civic engagement education as a democracy and citizenship building activity deriving from classical political philosophers such as Locke, Kant, and Mill (Speck & Hoppe, 2004). Civic education’s purpose is creating an active corps of people conducting service in their communities, participating in organizations that comprise our civil society, and engaging politically (Colby, Beaumont, Ehrlich, & Corngold, 2010; Markus, Howard, & King, 1993; Putnam, 2001; Speck & Hoppe, 2004). Hence, our operationalization of mission, infrastructure, activities, and outcomes incorporates measures of service, service-learning, and democratic engagement. Collectively, these measures serve as proxies for the institutionalization of student-centered civic engagement.¹

Mission

While early postsecondary research on mission statements largely viewed them as aspirational documents (Davies, 1986; Delucchi, 1997), Morphew and Hartley (2006) contended they signal values and goals to external constituencies. We agree; civic engagement references in mission statements demonstrate institutional goals of civic education. To assess these goals, we undertook a computer-aided text analysis and created binary indicator variables for the presence of keywords in mission statements. Because there are a “multiplicity of terms” used to describe civic engagement (Jacoby, 2009, p. 6), we chose many keywords from the literature to reflect our broad conceptualization of civic engagement, including citizen, civic engagement, community engagement, democracy, social justice, volunteer, service, and vote.²

The timing of our mission statement collection has two limitations. Because institutions frequently revise mission statements (Morphew & Hartley, 2006) and because the meaning of civic engagement changes over time (Saltmarsh & Hartley, 2011), changes to mission may reflect the contemporary conception of civic engagement at the time of adoption. Older mission statements may conceive of civic engagement as exclusively service oriented, whereas newer mission statements incorporate political and democratic engagement. Second, we collected commuter institution mission statements one year after we collected residential college statements, and the commuter mission statements may have altered their civic engagement language within that year.

To address both limitations, we investigated changes in civic engagement–related text in mission statements over time and found very few changes in the frequency of our civic engagement terms, which suggests stability in our mission statement measures over time.³

Infrastructure

The literature documents the importance of congruence between institutional mission and infrastructure to the success of community service and service-learning (Holland, 1997; Ward, 1996). We extend this argument by positing that campuses valuing civic engagement will devote labor and capital to that goal; devoting resources indicates a commitment beyond signaling goals. We measured infrastructure as a binary indicator variable for the presence of an office dedicated to civic engagement on campus. We also counted the staff associated with that office per 1,000 enrolled students to create a staffing measure accounting for institution size. Finally, we created a binary infrastructure indicator for membership in Campus Compact given that members engage in a network that provides civic engagement resources, professional development, and partnerships.

Activities

Our broad definition of civic engagement led us to evaluate many distinct civic education activities, and we code a binary indicator variable for the presence of each. Due to data limitations, all activity measures assess whether the institution offered the activity, not how many students participated.

Studies have shown that student involvement in community service and service-learning build pro-civic attitudes, connections to surrounding communities, and a desire to further volunteer (Astin, 1992; O’Leary, 2014; Sax & Astin, 1997). We therefore included the availability of service trips, days of student and alumni service, service events during student orientation, and service-based work study programs. To account for monetary investment in encouraging service, we included scholarships related to community service and civic engagement. The literature also suggests curricular components of civic engagement are important (Hillygus, 2005; Scobey, 2010), so we measured whether each institution offered and required a service-learning course for credit. We acknowledge these curricula measures are limited. They do not capture which pedagogies are adopted, and they may serve as inexact proxies for the availability of civic engagement degree programs. Finally, we observed the presence of a civic engagement–themed residence hall to account for a concentrated residential experience given evidence from Rowan-Kenyon et al. (2007) suggesting student participation in civic living learning programs may improve civic engagement.

To broaden the focus beyond service, we included political engagement as a civic engagement dimension with its own related activity (Morgan & Orphan, 2015; Saltmarsh, Hartley, & Clayton, 2009). The one measure of political activity widely available in the data is whether institutions organize a legislative action day in which students lobby local, state, or federal authorities.

Outcomes

The empirical work on returns to civic education predominantly focuses on student-level outcomes such as voting and volunteering and finds that institutions can affect civic outcomes (Andolina, Jenkins, Zukin, & Keeter, 2003; Barnhardt et al., 2015; Colby, 2008; Dee, 2004; Doyle & Skinner, 2017; Hillygus, 2005; Sax, 2004). While such analyses are important, our study is interested in neither identifying student-level outcomes nor measuring the efficacy of programs or interventions. Rather, we are interested in identifying institutional characteristics that are related to institution-level outcomes such as receiving the President’s Service Honor Roll or the Carnegie civic engagement classification, the number of ROTC cadets enrolled in each branch,⁴ and the number of students who joined the Peace Corps⁵ after graduation.

This diversity of measures is a distinct advantage of our analysis. We believe we are the first to collect and analyze the number of offices on each campus, indicators for legislative action days, orientation service programs, alumni days of service, and civic engagement scholarships. While other measures have been utilized in previous studies, we examined these activities and outcomes across different institutional types. Finally, our study builds on the existing corpus of work on mission statements by using a broad array of terms that capture several dimensions of civic engagement, although we acknowledge we do not fully capture the cognitive or cultural aspects of civic engagement such as ethics courses or participation in cultural activities. Future research is needed to more fully explore these dimensions of civic engagement.

Sample, Data, and Methods

Our study applies mixed methods to multiple data sources on several samples of institutions. We selected our main sample of 275 colleges and universities to test differences in civic engagement across three important variables: institutional control (public/private), research output, and residency. Specifically, we choose the American Association of Universities (AAU) as our sample of research universities, the Annapolis Group as our sample of liberal arts colleges, and the 2015 U.S. News & World Report (USNWR) list of “Universities Where the Most Freshmen Commute” for commuter institutions (Haynie, 2015). The AAU is an organization consisting of 62 high research output public and private universities. The Annapolis Group is a consortium of 125 elite, undergraduate-focused liberal arts colleges. We excluded military academies, for-profit institutions, special interest institutions such as culinary and arts schools, and two-year community colleges due to the specific nature of their missions.

We combined several sources of data. We collected civic engagement–related office website information and institutional mission statements from the 2013–2014 academic year for AAU and Annapolis Group institutions and from the 2014–2015 academic year for commuter colleges. Civic engagement outcomes come from the 2013–2014 edition of Robert Kelchen’s Washington Monthly “Schools Most Devoted to Service” rankings.⁶ To provide estimates per thousand students enrolled, we use enrollment numbers from the 2013–2014 IPEDS data set. IPEDS also provided institutional mission statements or links to mission statements.

Methodologically, we conducted a content analysis of each institution’s civic engagement–related websites (Kim & Kuljis, 2010). We used human coding of latent content to record which offices participated in civic engagement, their staffing levels, and any mentions of civic engagement activities related to our measures (Neuendorf, 2002).⁷

In Tables 1 through 3, we provide descriptive statistics of all variables obtained from these data sources across different types of institutions. Using t tests for differences in independent means, we analyzed this sample of institutions and compared differences in civic engagement mission, infrastructures, activities, and outcomes across public and private, research and liberal arts, and residential and commuter divides.⁸ The public sample included public research institutions in the AAU and public commuter schools on the USNWR list. The private sample included the Annapolis Group liberal arts colleges, private research institutions in the AAU, and not-for-profit private commuter schools on the USNWR list. Annapolis group institutions comprised the liberal arts college sample, while AAU institutions comprised the research university sample. Lastly, Annapolis and AAU institutions made up our residential sample, while the USNWR list of commuter institutions constitute the commuter sample.

Table 1

Civic Engagement Differences Among Control

	Private	N	Public	N	Difference
Mission statements
Citizen	0.170	171	0.279	104	−0.109*
Civic engagement	0.000	171	0.038	104	−0.038*
Democracy	0.035	171	0.019	104	0.016
Social justice	0.070	171	0.000	104	0.070**
Volunteer	0.023	171	0.010	104	0.014
Service	0.322	171	0.471	104	−0.150*
Community engagement	0.018	171	0.038	104	−0.021
Vote	0.000	171	0.000	104	0.000
Infrastructure
Indicator for having a civic engagement office	0.889	171	0.683	104	0.206***
Number of staff per 1,000 students	2.733	157	0.263	91	2.469***
Campus Compact	0.708	171	0.760	104	−0.052
Activities
Service trips	0.876	169	0.604	101	0.272***
Day of service	0.828	169	0.676	102	0.152**
Alumni day of service	0.387	168	0.290	100	0.097
Legislative action day	0.251	167	0.318	99	−0.067
Service orientation	0.571	168	0.192	99	0.380***
Themed residence hall	0.269	167	0.160	100	0.109*
Scholarship, current students	0.379	161	0.343	99	0.035
Scholarship, incoming students	0.239	163	0.194	98	0.045
Service work study program	0.619	168	0.604	101	0.015
Required service-learning class	0.120	167	0.010	102	0.110**
Optional service-learning class	0.899	168	0.784	102	0.114**
Outcomes
President’s Service Honor Roll	0.357	171	0.346	104	0.011
Carnegie civic engagement classification	0.105	171	0.269	104	−0.164***
ROTC: Army per 1,000 students	0.462	171	0.517	104	−0.055
ROTC: Navy per 1,000 students	0.424	171	0.591	104	−0.168
ROTC: Air Force per 1,000 students	0.252	171	1.066	104	−0.814***
Peace Corps per 1,000 students	2.573	171	0.874	104	1.699***

Note. Except for the number of staff per 1,000 students, ROTC, and Peace Corps variables, variables are binary indicators. “Citizen” includes references to the words citizenship, citizenry, and citizen. Sample includes 275 colleges and universities making up the Association of American Universities representing institutions with very high research activity, the Annapolis Group of liberal arts colleges, and US News & World Report’s list of 100 schools with the lowest percentages of students living in on-campus housing and excludes for-profit institutions and special interest institutions such as music conservatories and bible colleges. Outcome data come from the 2013–2014 edition of Washington Monthly’s annual college ratings.

p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

Table 2

Civic Engagement Differences Among Research Universities and Liberal Arts Colleges

	Annapolis Group	N	AAU	N	Difference
Mission statements
Citizen	0.200	125	0.233	60	−0.033
Civic engagement	0.000	125	0.017	60	−0.017
Democracy	0.040	125	0.033	60	0.007
Social justice	0.064	125	0.017	60	0.047
Volunteer	0.024	125	0.017	60	0.007
Service	0.352	125	0.433	60	−0.081
Community engagement	0.024	125	0.017	60	0.007
Vote	0.000	125	0.000	60	0.000
Infrastructure
Indicator for having a civic engagement office	0.936	125	1.000	60	−0.064
Number of staff per 1,000 students	3.322	114	0.991	54	2.332***
Campus Compact	0.728	125	0.783	60	−0.055
Activities
Service trips	0.944	124	0.931	58	0.013
Day of service	0.871	124	0.983	58	−0.112*
Alumni day of service	0.371	124	0.764	55	−0.393***
Legislative action day	0.244	123	0.709	55	−0.465***
Service orientation	0.637	124	0.509	55	0.128
Themed residence hall	0.276	123	0.400	55	−0.124
Scholarship, current students	0.462	117	0.426	54	0.036
Scholarship, incoming students	0.297	118	0.204	54	0.093
Service work study program	0.613	124	0.839	56	−0.226**
Required service-learning class	0.139	122	0.034	58	0.105*
Optional service-learning class	0.967	123	0.966	58	0.002
Outcomes
President’s Service Honor Roll	0.384	125	0.367	60	0.017
Carnegie civic engagement classification	0.120	125	0.117	60	0.003
ROTC: Army per 1,000 students	0.559	125	0.318	60	0.241
ROTC: Navy per 1,000 students	0.200	125	1.807	60	−1.607***
ROTC: Air Force per 1,000 students	0.139	125	2.055	60	−1.916***
Peace Corps per 1,000 students	3.097	125	1.750	60	1.347***

Note. Except for the number of staff per 1,000 students, ROTC, and Peace Corps variables, variables are binary indicators. “Citizen” includes references to the words citizenship, citizenry, and citizen. Sample includes 275 colleges and universities making up the Association of American Universities (AAU) representing institutions with very high research activity, the Annapolis Group of liberal arts colleges, and US News & World Report’s list of 100 schools with the lowest percentages of students living in on-campus housing and excludes for-profit institutions and special interest institutions such as music conservatories and bible colleges. Outcome data come from the 2013–2014 edition of Washington Monthly’s annual college ratings.

p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

Table 3

Civic Engagement Differences Among Residency Status

	Residential	N	Commuter	N	Difference
Mission statements
Citizen	0.211	185	0.211	90	−0.000
Civic engagement	0.005	185	0.033	90	−0.028
Democracy	0.038	185	0.011	90	0.027
Social justice	0.049	185	0.033	90	0.015
Volunteer	0.022	185	0.011	90	0.011
Service	0.378	185	0.378	90	0.001
Community engagement	0.022	185	0.033	90	−0.012
Vote	0.000	185	0.000	90	0.000
Infrastructure
Indicator for having a civic engagement office	0.957	185	0.511	90	0.446***
Number of staff per 1,000 students	2.573	168	0.260	80	2.313***
Campus Compact	0.746	185	0.689	90	0.057
Activities
Service trips	0.940	182	0.432	88	0.508***
Day of service	0.907	182	0.494	89	0.412***
Alumni day of service	0.492	179	0.067	89	0.424***
Legislative action day	0.388	178	0.051	88	0.337***
Service orientation	0.598	179	0.091	88	0.507***
Themed residence hall	0.315	178	0.056	89	0.258***
Scholarship, current students	0.450	171	0.202	89	0.248***
Scholarship, incoming students	0.267	172	0.135	89	0.133*
Service work study program	0.683	180	0.472	89	0.211***
Required service-learning class	0.106	180	0.022	89	0.083*
Optional service-learning class	0.967	181	0.629	89	0.338***
Outcomes
President’s Service Honor Roll	0.378	185	0.300	90	0.078
Carnegie civic engagement classification	0.119	185	0.267	90	−0.148**
ROTC: Army per 1,000 students	0.481	185	0.486	90	−0.006
ROTC: Navy per 1,000 students	0.721	185	0.006	90	0.716***
ROTC: Air Force per 1,000 students	0.760	185	0.148	90	0.612*
Peace Corps per 1,000 students	2.660	185	0.430	90	2.231***

p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

These institutions are not representative of all postsecondary institutions. We selected this subset of institutions to determine the extent to which civic engagement differs across multiple institutional contexts. This analysis identifies differences, but results may not generalize to all institutions.

To gain generalizability to the national context, we employed ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analysis on a much larger sample of institutions using data provided by IPEDS and Washington Monthly for the 2011–2012 academic year. This regression analysis sample included Title IV participating, nonproprietary four-year institutions with first-time, full-time undergraduates. We excluded institutions with special missions such as bible colleges, tribal colleges, military academies, and schools of art and design and used casewise deletion to drop institutions with missing variables. The final regression sample included 1,170 institutions.

The regression analysis serves two purposes. First, it increases generalizability. Second, it enables an analysis of the independent relationship of institutional variables on civic engagement outcomes while controlling for others. Specifically, we distinguish the role of residency from that of selectivity, research, student services spending, and enrollment size. We employed the following regression model:

\begin{array}{l} O u t c o m e_{i} = β_{0} + β_{1} P u b l i c_{i} + β_{2} R e s e a r c h_{i} + β_{3} S t u d e n t s_{i} \\ + β_{4} R e s i d e n c e H a l l_{i} + β_{5} E n r o l l m e n t_{i} + β_{6} S A T_{i} + ε_{i} . \end{array}

We regressed three different civic engagement outcomes (ROTC enrollment, Peace Corps volunteers, and number of community service hours) on institutional characteristics. Public is an indicator variable for whether the institution is in the public sector, research captures the total annual research funding of the institution. Students captures the total amount spent on student services. Residence hall is the number of beds on campus, reflecting whether the institution serves a predominantly residential or commuter student population. Total enrollment (enrollment) is the full-time, first-time undergraduate enrollment at that institution. We used the 75th percentile of combined math and verbal SAT scores with ACT concordance (SAT) to proxy for institutional selectivity. We standardized all the continuous measures such that reported coefficients are beta coefficients.

Results

Public/Private

For each of our civic engagement measures, Table 1 presents the means of private and public institutions and the difference of private minus public means. The number of observations varies slightly across measures due to the lack of reliable data on some measures for a small number of institutions.

In general, a minority of all mission statements include our civic engagement terms. This is likely why the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) promotes greater inclusion of civic values in mission statements (AASCU, 2009). However, the results supported our hypothesis that public institutions espouse a greater civic commitment. They are more likely to use the terms citizen, civic engagement, and service than their private counterparts, although the differences are small. The only exception to the pattern was that social justice existed in 12 private but zero public mission statements. All but 2 of the 12 were founded by religious organizations, suggesting a religious connection. None of the mission statements mentioned voting. These findings comport with existing literature that has demonstrated public institution mission statements emphasize service to the community (Morphew & Hartley, 2006; Saichaie & Morphew, 2014).

The lofty civic goals of public mission statements are not reflected in the civic engagement activities offered, as only one measured activity was more frequently offered at public institutions (legislative action day), but that difference was not statistically significant. In contrast, private colleges were much more active in service activities such as offering service trips, days of service, service during orientation, and requiring a service-learning course. Privates were also 11 percentage points more likely to offer a civic engagement residence hall.

On infrastructure measures, we found that private colleges were more likely to have an office dedicated to civic engagement and have 10 times the number of staff per capita than publics. We examined the difference in student services spending between private and public colleges using IPEDS data to discern whether this differential investment is reflective of broader differences in overall student services spending. We found that privates spend, on average, four times more on student services than publics, so the differential investment was only partially explained by general student services spending. These infrastructure advantages may explain why private institutions offered significantly more civic engagement activities.

Finally, the outcome measures results were mixed. Publics were more likely to receive the Carnegie Foundation’s civic engagement classification and had a larger proportion of students in the Air Force ROTC, but privates had nearly two more Peace Corps members per thousand students.

Taken collectively, these results run counter to our hypothesis. Although public institutions focus slightly more on civic engagement in their missions, they neither provided more civic engagement opportunities nor exhibited better outcomes relative to private institutions.

Research/Liberal Arts

Table 2 replicates Table 1 for research and liberal arts institutions to test our hypothesis that the research focus crowds out an emphasis on civic education. We observed no differences in missions between the two groups; however, there was a large difference in the number of staff, with liberal arts institutions having, on average, over three times the number of staff members per 1,000 students than research institutions.

In terms of activities, research universities were more likely to offer days of service for both students and alumni as well as a service work study program. They also sponsored legislative action days much more frequently than liberal arts colleges, possibly driven by the competition for federal research grants. Liberal arts colleges were 10 percentage points more likely to require a service-learning class as part of the curriculum; however, the option for taking a service-learning course exists almost universally at both types of institutions.

Research institutions had far greater Navy and Air Force ROTC participation, but liberal arts colleges had greater Peace Corps participation. Over three students out of a thousand entered the Peace Corps after graduation from liberal arts colleges, nearly twice the rate of research institutions.

The evidence did not support our hypothesis of less civic engagement at research universities. There was no difference in civic engagement mission, and research institutions offered more activities than liberal arts colleges. Despite their investment in research activities and graduate students, research universities might strive to provide a similar level of undergraduate education as their liberal arts counterparts, resulting in similar civic engagement opportunities. However, given the substantially larger commitment of civic engagement staffing resources at liberal arts campuses, it is surprising that activities and outcomes are similar. Perhaps economies of scale enable research institutions to civically educate a larger number of students more efficiently, or perhaps additional staff members contribute to alternative activities and outcomes not easily measured.

Residential/Commuter

Finally, we compared residential and commuter institutions. Little difference existed in the mission statements, but the infrastructure results demonstrated nearly double the likelihood of an office at residential colleges and 10 times the number of staff members per capita as commuter schools. Like the private/public finding, this is driven in part by general student services spending as residential institutions spent 3.38 times more than commuter institutions.

The residential institution commitment to civic engagement was also clear in the activities offered. All 11 of our activity measures were practically and statistically significantly larger in residential colleges. Students living on campus may demand more extracurricular activities at residential colleges; however, more frequent service-learning at such institutions indicates an emphasis on both curricular and extracurricular activities.

Additionally, the ROTC and Peace Corps outcomes strongly favored residential colleges. The President’s Service Honor Roll was similar across institution types, but more than double the number of commuter schools were classified by the Carnegie Foundation as were residential colleges. Commuter institutions may believe the Carnegie classification is a low-cost method of demonstrating a commitment to civic engagement. Taken together, these results indicate residential colleges have a stronger commitment to civic engagement.

Regression Analysis

The results clearly demonstrate that residency is a more important indicator of civic engagement activities and outcomes than either control or research output. However, it is possible the residential findings were driven by wealth, elite status, or selectivity given nearly all the residential campuses could be considered wealthy and selective while almost none of the commuter campuses are. To mitigate these concerns, we relied on regression analysis using IPEDS data on our larger sample of institutions. Table 4 provides descriptive statistics on the dependent and independent variables for the regression analysis.

Table 4

Descriptive Statistics of Regression Model Variables

	Observations	Mean	SD
Dependent variables
Number of Peace Corps volunteers	1,170	7.04	13.62
Total ROTC enrollment	1,170	40.99	103.09
Community service hours (in thousands)	484	197.82	593.22
Independent variables
Public institution indicator	1,170	0.37	0.48
Research funding (in $millions)	1,170	26.00	79.40
Student services funding (in $millions)	1,170	19.13	25.61
Total residence hall capacity	1,170	2130.23	2243.70
Total undergraduate enrollment	1,170	6138.37	7406.81
SAT Composite 75th percentile with ACT concordance	1,170	1171.74	136.48

Note. Independent variables come from the Integrated Postsecondary Education System (IPEDS) of the National Center for Education Statistics for the 2011–2012 academic year. Outcome variables come from the annual Washington Monthly college rankings for the 2011–2012 academic year. Only 484 institutions reported community service hours to Washington Monthly, resulting in the smaller sample size for that outcome. Table reflects only the institutions for which we had no missing data on the public institution, research funding, residence hall capacity, undergraduate enrollment, and SAT variables.

We regressed civic engagement outcomes on measures of residency, selectivity, student services funding, control, research funding, and enrollment. The three outcomes are total community service hours accumulated by students, number of ROTC cadets across all three branches, and number of Peace Corps volunteers from the institution.⁹ Table 5 reports the regression results using standardized coefficients for all continuous measures, hence the coefficients are beta coefficients.

Table 5

Relationship of Institutional Characteristics and Civic Engagement Outcomes

	Peace Corps Volunteers	ROTC Enrollment	Service Hours
Public institution	−0.10	0.04	−0.33
	(0.07)	(0.17)	(0.35)
Total research funding	0.46***	0.12	0.00
	(0.09)	(0.07)	(0.09)
Total residence hall capacity	0.29**	0.28***	0.08
	(0.09)	(0.06)	(0.07)
Enrollment: grand total	0.33***	0.48***	0.44
	(0.09)	(0.10)	(0.33)
SAT composite 75th percentile	0.21***	−0.00	0.00
	(0.03)	(0.03)	(0.03)
Total student services funding	−0.04	−0.17***	−0.02
	(0.06)	(0.05)	(0.09)
Constant	0.32***	0.26***	0.01
	(0.04)	(0.05)	(0.13)
Observations	1,170	1,170	484
Adjusted R²	0.64	0.27	0.22

Note. All variables other than the indicator for whether an institution is public are standardized, hence the reported coefficients are beta coefficients. Robust standard errors are in parentheses. SAT variable includes ACT concordance. Data come from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) and the annual Washington Monthly college rankings for the 2011–2012 school year.

p < .01. ***p < .001.

Even after accounting for student services funding and selectivity, residency is an important determinant of civic engagement outcomes in this comprehensive sample of four-year colleges. Controlling for the other measures, a one standard deviation increase in total residence hall capacity predicts nearly a third of a standard deviation increase for Peace Corps volunteerism (0.29) and ROTC enrollment (0.28). The residency effect size of 0.28 is the second largest predictor of ROTC enrollment after total enrollment (0.48) and the third largest of Peace Corps volunteering (the largest is total research funding at 0.46). The regression results clearly support our earlier findings. Residency is an important predictor of civic engagement outcomes across four-year colleges even after controlling for other predictors of civic engagement.

Discussion and Conclusion

Because of their core mission of “educating citizens for life in democracy,” colleges and universities play an important role in civil society (Loss, 2012, p. 6). However, not all institutions provide equal opportunity for civic education and engagement. By examining a broader array of institutions and more diverse measures of civic engagement than found in prior literature, our analysis reveals substantial differences in civic engagement infrastructure, activities, and outcomes between residential and commuter institutions.

Although literature has previously identified that residential students and experiences are linked to increased general engagement (LaNasa, Olson, & Alleman, 2007; Zhao & Kuh, 2004), we provide evidence that this is true specifically for civic engagement. We find that residential institutions offer substantially more opportunities for civic engagement than commuter colleges, and this advantage remains even after controlling for selectivity, research, size, and student services expenditures, all of which potentially biased previous studies.

This finding may not be surprising if we consider that civic engagement is often localized. Students living on campus may demand greater opportunities to engage in their residential community, whereas students living off campus may demand more from community civic organizations like the NAACP, Junior League, or YMCA. As a result of this dynamic, the infrastructure in support of civic engagement at commuter institutions probably developed differently than the infrastructure at residential institutions.

It is insightful to place our findings in the context of prior research. Qualitative research revealed that students at elite institutions (both public and private) had greater resources and opportunities to become civically engaged (Kiesa et al., 2007; Nie & Hillygus, 2001). Our regression analysis suggests selectivity plays a role, but the residential experience is a better predictor. Johnson-Hakim et al. (2013) suggest urban commuter campuses offer opportunities for civic engagement but that commuter students do not take up such opportunities. Although we do not observe take-up rates, our findings document that commuter campuses are not providing equality of civic engagement opportunities relative to residential campuses. Bringle and Hatcher (2000) suggest that commuter colleges are well positioned to develop service-learning, but we find that service-learning opportunities (as with all activities we observe) are fewer at commuter institutions than residential colleges.

Knox, Lindsay, and Kolb (1993) found no relationship between residency status and student participation in community groups or volunteer work. Our finding of no discernable relationship between community service hours and residency status is consistent with their prior work. A major contribution of our analysis is that we examine broader outcomes, including Peace Corps and military service, thereby providing a more complete picture of the relationship between the residential experience and civic engagement.

We also situate our findings within the context of neoinstitutional theory as our results are consistent with institutional isomorphism and decoupling. Institutions of all types espouse a civic mission at similar levels in their mission statements. Although we cannot directly test which type of isomorphism causes this consistency, the similar rates of participation observed in Campus Compact and the President’s Service Honor Roll suggest normative isomorphism as the professionalization of civic engagement leads all institutions to engage in professional networks and seek government recognition to gain legitimacy (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983).

Our analysis of the relationship between institutional characteristics and civic engagement serves as important empirical evidence of isomorphism in mission and varied levels of decoupling in practice. Institutions have vastly different staffing levels and a high variance of civic engagement activities across institutions. The missions and behaviors of many, mostly residential, institutions are not decoupled. Their missions advocate for civic education, and they devote resources to related infrastructures and activities.

Despite the similarity in mission statements, commuter colleges are much less likely to have an office, have far fewer staff members, and are less likely to offer every civic engagement activity we measured compared to residential institutions. Our results provide strong empirical evidence that residency is linked to decoupling and demonstrate that a residential student population is an important institutional characteristic in promoting civic engagement.

The public/private results run counter to our initial expectations. Public institutions focus slightly more on civic engagement in their missions, but they neither provided more activities nor offered improved outcomes relative to private institutions. Private institutions had substantially higher investments in civic engagement offices with more staff, suggesting greater alignment between mission and practice, and hence less decoupling, than public institutions.

While our findings related to research and liberal arts institutions are consistent with isomorphism as these elite colleges have similar levels of civic engagement in their missions, the evidence of varied decoupling is less clear. Liberal arts colleges hire more staff per student, but research institutions provide more opportunities to engage in civic building activities.

It is insightful to consider why this variance in decoupling in civic engagement occurs. Both AASCU (2009) and Ward (1996) argued decoupling occurs due to resource constraints. Our large sample regression analysis demonstrates that student services spending plays a role, but differences by residency still exist after controlling for student spending.

It is possible the industry’s increasing focus on labor market preparation leads institutions to deprioritize civic goals, and this pressure may apply more strongly to commuter colleges. An alternative explanation is that the agency of civic supporters has grown over time at residential campuses relative to commuter schools, leading to greater institutionalization of civic engagement, a process seen at work in service-learning (Lounsbury & Pollack, 2001).

Uncovering the importance of residency as a predictor of civic engagement marks an important new finding in the civic engagement literature; however, we note data availability provided a limitation in this study. Measuring civic outcomes such as voter registration, running for public office, becoming involved in community groups, or working for nonprofits would enhance the analysis, but few institutions track these important outcomes.

While it is possible that students living off campus are as civically engaged as their on-campus peers in unobservable ways, our study suggests that on-campus living is related to the development of civically engaged college graduates. This finding may cause concern given current trends of increased nonresidential postsecondary enrollment. A growing public policy focus on trade schools and community colleges, increased emphasis on online education, and the expansion of the for-profit sector have undoubtedly increased access to higher education but have done so in predominantly nonresidential settings. If higher education is intended to serve as a foundation of American democracy but nonresidential institutions are unable to ensure the same civic opportunities and outcomes as residential institutions, we may begin to see cracks in that foundation. An entire generation of college students attending nonresidential institutions may have less exposure to civic education, endangering our civil society.

Two broad solutions are available. Policymakers may choose to bolster the residential capacity of open-access and commuter institutions, thereby increasing the residential share of higher education. Given the financial cost of increased residential infrastructure and the large portion of nontraditional students who prefer nonresidential education, this solution is far from ideal. Instead, higher education leaders must learn how to build civic education into nonresidential settings. The future of America’s vibrant democracy depends on it.

Footnotes

Notes

Authors

BRENT J. EVANS is an assistant professor of public policy and higher education in the Department of Leadership, Policy, and Organizations at Peabody College, Vanderbilt University, PMB 414, 230 Appleton Place, Nashville, TN, 37203; b.evans@vanderbilt.edu . He primarily conducts quantitative research on college access and student success, including work on financial aid, loan aversion, admissions testing, civic engagement, and persistence in online courses.

CHRISTOPHER R. MARSICANO is a visiting lecturer in the Educational Studies Department at Davidson College, Box 7124, Davidson, NC 28035-7124; chmarsicano@davidson.edu . His research focuses on higher education finance and policy; lobbying and interest groups in education; public policy analysis and management; and civic, religious, and political engagement on college campuses.

COURTNEY J. LENNARTZ is a doctoral student in the Higher Education program in the Department of Counseling, Higher Education, and Special Education at the University of Maryland, College Park, Benjamin Building, College Park, MD 20742; clennart@umd.edu . Her research focuses on faculty workload and reward systems, faculty careers, and civic engagement.

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