Increasing Students’ Civic Engagement Through Internships and Intensive Leadership Programs
As teachers and citizens, the need to address the problem of declining civic engagement among our
students is readily apparent. This paper examines two avenues of increasing students’ civic engagement,
and compares the effectiveness of each. The first program seeking to increase students’ civic engagement
is the College Leaders Program, an intensive summer-long residential leadership program that seeks to
increase the efficacy of student participants. The second is a standard, semester-long 8-10 hour per week
legislative internship, in which students work in a district office of a member of Congress. This paper
examines the impact of these two programs on students’ levels of civic engagement.
Introduction
Among scholars and practitioners alike, there is a growing concern over the erosion of
Americans' confidence in their government and public institutions and their growing disdain for public
life in general. This phenomenon is particularly true among young adults, and yet it is rather paradoxical
that at a time when the number of opportunities for political information and engagement are expanding,
and at a time when participation in social and community organizations is growing, interest in public
affairs among Americans is shrinking.
The evidence of a problem is clear. Although exit polls suggest that voter turnout amongst 18-24
year olds was up slightly in 2004 (Circle Staff 2005), the electoral participation of young adults has
declined steadily since 1972 and consistently hovers about 20 percent below electoral participation by
older adults (Levine and Lopez 2002). Young Americans exhibit striking contradictions: they are fairly
active in social organizations on the one hand and fairly tuned out of politics and political participation on
the other hand. For instance, the UCLA Higher Education Research Institute reports that although interest
in politics amongst college freshmen has risen slightly in recent years it is still nowhere near the levels of
the late 1960s. HERI found that 34.3% of freshmen believed that “keeping up to date with political
affairs” is a very important or essential life goal in its 2004 survey of entering college freshmen.
compared to the 60.3% reported in 1966. In addition, only 25.5% of freshmen in 2004 reported discussing
politics (HERI 2004). Yet, in its 2003 survey, HERI found that 83.1% of freshmen volunteered (HERI
2003).
Convention