New Survey Reveals Low Level Of Civics Literacy Among College Students

A new survey conducted by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) reveals that many of today’s college students lack basic knowledge about several important facts concerning American history and government.

The results, summarized in ACTA’s Losing America’s Memory 2.0, are based on answers to a 35-question survey administered to 3,026 undergraduate students between May 10, 2024 and June 19, 2024. The survey was designed and conducted by College Pulse and has an approximate margin of error of +/- 2.7 percentage points.

Here are some of the findings:

• Only 31% of students knew that James Madison is the Father of the Constitution.
• Sixty percent of students could not correctly identify the term lengths of members of the U.S House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate.
• Only 27% knew that Kamala Harris is the president of the U.S. Senate; 28% thought it was Joe Biden.
• Only 37% know that John Roberts is the chief justice of the Supreme Court; 16% said it was Clarence Thomas.
• Fewer than a quarter (23%) of students knew that the phrase, “Government of the people, by the people, for the people,” came from the Gettysburg Address.
• Only 35% knew that Mike Johnson is the speaker of the House of Representatives.
• Only 28% of students knew that the 13^th Amendment was the government action that freed the slaves.
• Fewer than one-third (32%) of students knew that the legislative branch has the power to declare war.
• Despite two recent presidential impeachment trials, only 32% knew that an impeachment trial takes place before the U.S. Senate; 30% thought it was the Supreme Court.
• Only a quarter of students knew that the Constitution does not specify the number of justices on the Supreme Court; one-third incorrectly believe that it requires nine judges.

In a press release, ACTA President Michael Poliakoff said, “The dismal results of our survey show that current students and recent college graduates have little idea of the American past or its core principles and values, no guide to take them through the roiling controversies facing us today or to enable them to defend and protect the free institutions that are the glory of our nation and an inspiration to the world. They cannot uphold what they do not comprehend. There is so much to be proud of as we near the 250^th anniversary of our independence and the birth of our democratic republic. But being the world’s oldest democracy is no guarantee for the future of our democratic republic.”

Among its various initiatives, ACTA has long maintained that all American college students should be required to take a course on U.S. history and government in order to graduate. As part of that mission, it has published several reports on civic education including the 2000 survey, Losing America’s Memory; a 2016 report, A Crisis in Civic Education; a 2019 survey, America’s Knowledge Crisis; and its own college ratings tool, What Will They Learn?^®, which assesses the core curricula of over 1,100 institutions nationwide.

This post appeared on Forbes on July 15, 2024.