UNC System likely to add civics requirements. Will it avoid ‘interference’ by lawmakers?

When the UNC System Board of Governors votes next week on a policy that will require students at the state’s public universities to learn the “foundations of American democracy,” few — if any — onlookers are likely to take issue with the concept.

Reports in recent years have shown that, across the country, students’ understanding of American history and government is decreasing. While North Carolina high school students are required to take courses on civics and U.S. history to graduate, some leaders — including, notably, UNC System President Peter Hans — argue that more can be done at the university level.

“It is difficult to look at the state of American civic life right now and conclude higher education is doing all we can to prepare our graduates for our democratic republic,” Hans said at a January meeting of the Board of Governors.

But debate has emerged over the process by which the new requirement was developed and what that could foreshadow for future policy proposals.

The policy bears significant similarities, and some notable differences, to the “Reclaiming College Education on America’s Constitutional Heritage,” or REACH Act, a Republican-sponsored bill considered in the General Assembly last year. The bill was heavily criticized by some university faculty, including nearly 700 at UNC-Chapel Hill who signed a letter against the bill and other higher-education legislation and policies last spring, saying the proposals violated “the principles of academic freedom and shared governance that undergird higher education in N.C. and the U.S.”

The bill passed the state House, but after it stalled in the Senate, UNC System leaders began working on their own version of the policy, recruiting a small group of faculty from across the 16-university system to assist them. The five-member faculty group was led by Wade Maki, a UNC Greensboro professor who chairs the UNC System Faculty Assembly.

Faculty leaders who spoke to The News & Observer said the system’s approach of drafting its own version of the policy was used to get ahead of the legislature potentially acting on the REACH Act again, either in the upcoming short legislative session or at another time. While faculty were involved in the development of the policy, most who spoke to The N&O agreed the process — which was undoubtedly spurred by the REACH Act — was not ideal.

“What’s really important for the public to know is that, you know, faculty did not object to learning civics. We love the idea of students having a college-level civics experience, right? There’s no disagreement on that,” Maki told the N&O. “There is, sort of, a lot of concern about the process we use.”

UNC System policy’s similarities to NC REACH ACT

The new UNC System policy will create a new graduation requirement for students, to be fulfilled at some point in their undergraduate education at a state university, to “successfully complete” coursework in which they “evaluate” key documents, concepts and milestones from the founding of the country to ongoing challenges “to form ‘a more perfect Union.’”

The policy lists six documents that students must evaluate:

• The U.S. Constitution

• The Declaration of Independence

• “A representative selection” of Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison’s Federalist Papers

• President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address

• Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation

• Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail

The policy also indicates that faculty should teach additional readings, beyond those explicitly named, “that reflect the breadth of American experiences.”

The requirement does not create a single, standardized class to be taught across the university system. Instead, the two major learning objectives — referred to in the policy as “student learning outcomes” — are most likely to be gleaned from a wide variety of existing courses in history, political science, philosophy or other humanities subject areas.

“These learning outcomes invite professors from across the system to teach the core concepts of American democracy in rigorous and creative ways, using their expertise to prepare our students for citizenship in a diverse society,” Hans said in January. “The goal is to create a shared foundation, guaranteeing all our students an equal opportunity to participate in a well-informed and responsible manner.”

The requirement also does not state how students should be graded or evaluated on their understanding of the material.

Those elements present key differences in the UNC System policy, as compared to the legislative REACH Act, which in an early version would have required students to take a standalone, three-credit hour course on American government and pass a final exam on the listed documents, worth at least 20% of their final grade.

Maki and Hans said the UNC System’s version of the requirements allows the material and concepts to be taught across the university system in a way that is conscious of the varying degrees of resources campuses have and without increasing the time it will take for students to complete their degrees.

“As I understand it, we have accomplished the learning objectives that our stakeholders were interested in in a way that isn’t going to impact students’ time to graduation,” Maki said. “It will have less of a resource-implication on campuses than what other alternatives were being looked at, and it prevents the legislature from feeling the need to directly intervene in curricular decisions.”

Faculty’s role in developing curriculum

Maki and the other members of the faculty working group developed the policy over several months in the fall, after the REACH Act stalled in the state Senate and system office staff approached Maki about developing an alternative, he said.

He acknowledged that the fast-paced development of the policy and the direct involvement of just five faculty members in the process was not preferable. Though the policy was developed largely outside of the public eye, faculty across the UNC System were later able to provide feedback on the proposal after it was made public. Maki said some faculty suggestions, such as the use of the term “evaluate” in the learning outcomes, are evident in the final proposal.

Maki said the process used was necessary to avoid “outside interference” from legislators or other stakeholders.

Traditionally, models of “shared governance” in higher education — which gives faculty, administrators and governing board members different responsibilities in the functioning and oversight of a university — place generating and overseeing curriculum with faculty, not board members or other legislative bodies.

The REACH Act, which would have created a legislative mandate for university curricula, “would have set an unfortunate precedent,” Maki said.

Still, some faculty, including UNC-Chapel Hill Faculty Chair Beth Moracco, worry that a precedent — anticipating legislative action and tailoring university curricula to those efforts — has already been set.

“That’s not the way that we should be developing curriculum or standards for our curricula,” Moracco told The N&O. “And so I worry about that being a precedent, because this was relatively confined … to required undergraduate coursework, but, you know, what will it be next time?”

Other faculty members said they appreciated the involvement of faculty in the development of the policy, even if it was more limited than they would have hoped.

“I support the idea of a mandate that college students learn about democratic principles and how our government functions, and I appreciate the fact that this was done with faculty representation, in an appropriate effort to maintain faculty control of the curriculum,” Holden Hansen, chair of the faculty at UNC Pembroke, told The N&O.

Maki said he doesn’t believe future curriculum is likely to be developed in the same way.

“We don’t think this is an example of a precedent going forward,” Maki said. “This was a particular case addressing a particular issue that we faced on a very tight timeline.”

Why some say the policy is necessary

In explaining the perceived need for a system-wide civics education requirement, Hans and other leaders have pointed to already low and decreasing levels of understanding among American students of U.S. history, government and related principles, as well eroding trust in the country’s democracy.

In January, Hans cited research from the Institute for Citizens and Scholars, which found in a survey last year that more than half of Americans ages 18 to 24 are “dissatisfied with our political system” and “have no or little trust in government institutions.”

System staff, in meeting materials, also cited test results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which “have consistently shown that less than 25 percent of students are proficient” in civics, the materials stated.

“That level of pessimism and civic illiteracy is simply not sustainable,” Hans said in January. “Our universities — especially our public universities — must do more to support and defend democracy.”

Sean Colbert-Lewis, a history professor at NC Central University who was one of the five members on the faculty workgroup that developed the policy, said he’s seen firsthand in the courses he teaches that some college students lack knowledge of the documents and ideas set forth in the policy.

“I teach U.S. and world history classes right now, and I’ve had students who didn’t understand such concepts as the Bill of Rights,” Colbert-Lewis told The N&O. “They didn’t know that our U.S. Constitution was actually the second constitution of the United States of America.”

While students in North Carolina public high schools are required to learn about American history and government, Hans said in January that the varying degrees of resources in public school districts can lead to varying degrees of understanding among students.

“Students from less resourced high schools, with fewer advanced courses or electives, are less likely to get the civic knowledge they need,” Hans said. “For the sake of fundamental fairness, our public universities should offer a college-level encounter with the tenets of American democracy.”

Ashley Moraguez, a political science professor at UNC Asheville who also served on the faculty working group, said she sees students generally enter her classes “with exposure and some level of understanding” of the documents and ideas set forth in the UNC System’s proposed policy. She acknowledged that some students may have more understanding than others.

But she said most students, regardless of their level of understanding at the beginning of the course, are eager to learn more.

“I think students really want to understand American politics and our political system, and they really want to engage,” Moraguez said. “And I think that these documents help give them a starting point to engage on a deeper level.”

What will the policy look like in practice?

If the policy goes into effect, each university in the UNC System will be responsible for identifying existing courses that meet the requirements. Maki said it will be key for faculty to provide students with a learning “experience” with the required readings, rather than simply listing them on a syllabus.

As a political science professor, Moraguez said she teaches several courses that involve instruction on at least some of the documents listed in the proposed policy. She believes one course, titled “Challenges to American Democracy,” would meet the required student learning outcomes in their entirety.

In that course, students read the required documents listed in the policy, plus several others that are not listed, to “gauge the progress we’ve made as a country from the founding period to today” in the contexts of race, gender and religion, Moraguez said. They are graded on their participation, reading-response papers and a final, semester-long project.

Moraguez said she wasn’t familiar with other classes at UNC Asheville that teach the required documents, but her “sense is that there are absolutely other courses that meet these requirements already, or that could be fairly straightforwardly modified to meet these requirements.”

Though the policy is relatively broad and allows for flexibility, some faculty and leaders have expressed concern that it could be difficult for smaller universities or those with smaller humanities departments to implement.

At a January Board of Governors committee meeting, UNC Pembroke Chancellor Robin Cummings said while he supports the policy, its requirements may be difficult for smaller universities, including UNCP, to implement.

“As the chancellor of a university with limited resources … the devil is always in the implementation details,” Cummings said.

Hansen, the UNCP faculty chair, said implementing the policy will likely “take time and resources and probably cost some money.”

“At this point, it’s not really clear if we’re going to be able to incorporate this subject matter into existing courses or we’re going to have to create entirely new courses,” Hansen said. “So, you know, we’re not going to be able to do this effectively without support.”

For universities that do not have as robust of political science, history or other humanities departments, the working group and other faculty are working to compile an online repository of teaching materials that could make implementing the policy’s requirements easier.

“I do empathize with campuses that don’t have the standalone history or political science departments,” Moraguez said. “But hopefully the flexibility in this requirement will make it easier to implement.”

The Board of Governors is likely to finalize its version of the policy in a full-board vote next week in Winston-Salem, after a committee approved it in February. The board is expected to vote on the policy through the consent agenda, which means it is likely to pass with a package of other policies and without further discussion.

The short legislative session, in which the REACH Act appears to meet the requirements of bills that could be considered, begins April 24.

Colbert-Lewis, of NC Central, said he believes the UNC System’s proposed policy sends a “friendly message to legislators” that faculty are invested in students’ education and that they would prefer legislators not interfere in the development of curriculum.

“We welcome partnerships with the legislature,” Colbert-Lewis said, “but it is my hope that the legislature does not try to control or infringe on the academic freedom that we, as faculty, take very seriously.”

Asked by The N&O in February whether he believed the UNC System’s policy satisfies the goals legislators were trying to achieve through the REACH Act, Hans said he and other system leaders are “hopeful the legislature senses our mutual commitment to greater civics education and has continued faith in our ability to provide that for our students.”