Campus Compact today joins forces with dozens of higher education and student success organizations to release a Shared Commitment that calls on the higher education community to make democracy learning a top priority and take concerted action to build Americans’ readiness to tackle urgent public problems.

In the Shared Commitment, signatories call for civic inquiry, practice in civil discourse, and collaborative work on real-world public problems to be part of each postsecondary student’s educational pathway.

The values expressed in the Shared Commitment are central to the mission of Campus Compact. For over 35 years, Campus Compact has worked to build a coalition of colleges and universities that is committed to the public purposes of higher education and to educate people for active and informed democratic participation. Through initiatives like Civic Action Planning, deliberative dialogue work, and Community Colleges for Democracy, Campus Compact will continue to work in partnership with others and our member campuses to prioritize student civic learning and democratic engagement.

The Shared Commitment pledge was organized by the Civic Learning and Democracy Engagement (CLDE). Founded by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association (SHEEO), Complete College America (CCA) and College Promise, CLDE is working in partnership with civic learning organizations and initiatives across the U.S.

The CLDE coalition will work on four goals to engage college students with democracy’s future:

• Quality and Equity: Build commitment and capacity—across postsecondary education—to make civic learning and democracy engagement an expected part of a quality college education for all college students, with equitable participation by students from underserved communities a top priority.
• Democracy Engagement: Engage students with democracy’s history, present and future in a diverse United States, in U.S. communities still struggling to reverse inherited disparities, and in a globally interdependent world where authoritarianism is on the rise.
• Collaborative Problem-Solving: Prepare each postsecondary student, through creative combinations of general education, arts and sciences studies, and career-related studies, to work directly on selected public problems that society needs to solve—e.g., problems in racial healing, health, education, housing, climate, digital access, human rights, justice systems, interfaith cooperation, and more.
• Policy Commitment: Secure policy support for and robust public investment in the goals listed above.

To join Campus Compact in support of the Shared Commitment statement, join the CLDE movement, and share your own work toward the CLDE goals, visit collegeciviclearning.org.