Teaching Democracy Through Practice: Collaborative Governance on Campus

We address how colleges and universities have come to resemble communities with municipal services. Third, we briefly review how educational institutions have taught students civic skills essential to a democracy over the past century. Fourth, we touch on democratic engagement in higher education. Fifth, we argue that the civic and diversity movements have operated in parallel universes on campuses with a negative effect on the diversity movement. We are now seeing that the result of this national polarization (not that higher education is entirely to blame) over race, whiteness, immigration, and what it means to be American, is a serious threat to democracy. Higher education needs to address this effect as part of its civic mission, not just its social justice mission. Finally, we suggest that higher education should practice what it preaches. Instead of limited civic curriculum and instruction in civic skills, we should build actual democratic structures that empower students to participate in governance on campus as citizens and the public do in local government. We propose bringing collaborative governance on campus by introducing students’ voices across the policy continuum of legislative, executive, and judicial functions in governing and managing higher education institutions.