Michael Poliakoff is the president and CEO of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. Joshua Dunn is the executive director of the Institute of American Civics at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.
President Abraham Lincoln once said that “as a nation of free men” the United States “must live through all time or die by suicide.” Today, the proliferation of civic ignorance poses the very sort of homegrown threat to the nation’s constitutional order Lincoln warned against.
A 2024 survey found that 48 percent of college students believe the Constitution grants the president, rather than Congress, the power to declare war. Only 40 percent could correctly identify the term lengths for members of Congress when posed as a multiple-choice question, and 63 percent failed to identify John G. Roberts Jr. as the chief justice of the United States.
The problem is not limited to ignorance of the nation’s history and political system. It also affects national security. People who don’t understand and appreciate their country are less likely to defend it. In fact, 57 percent of students said they would flee the country rather than defend it if it were invaded by an enemy such as Russia.
Colleges and universities bear much of the blame. According to the American Council of Trustees and Alumni’s “What Will They Learn?” survey, only 19 percent of the nation’s institutions of higher education require even a single class on the country’s history and government, a number unchanged since 2012. Only 14 states mandate their public universities to include a civics course in their core curriculum.
Thankfully, amid concerns that education has become overly politicized, some institutions are working to restore civics education to every college student’s course load.
In South Carolina and Ohio, legislation passed in recent years mandates that all public universities require coursework on U.S. history and government. Ohio’s legislature also established a civics board that shares best practices in higher education curriculums. In Kentucky, lawmakers recently passed a bill that established a civics center at the University of Kentucky and tasked it with producing educational resources about the American story. Earlier this month, the Iowa General Assembly passed legislation mandating a semester course on American history and a semester course on American government.
Other states have allowed university boards to take the lead. In 2024, the board of regents in Arizona adopted an “American Institutions” requirement that ensures students study U.S. history, the founding documents, landmark Supreme Court cases, civic participation and basic economics. The University of North Carolina’s board of governors adopted a “Foundations of American Democracy” requirement in 2025. It prescribes coursework to evaluate the key principles in core documents that extend from the founding of America through the civil rights era.
Private universities could learn from the example set by Baylor University, which requires a course titled “The U.S. Constitution, Its Interpretation, and the American Political Experience.”
Many states have also established civics centers that are increasingly tasked with offering these needed courses on the nation’s foundations. This spring, the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Civic Leadership offered numerous courses addressing the history and governing principles of America. The Institute of American Civics at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville offers several courses that engage students in the creation and development of America’s constitutional order and provides workshops for faculty from other Tennessee institutions who are developing similar courses. Such efforts can also be found at the University of Florida and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
These reforms don’t follow one particular model, which gives institutions the flexibility to find the one that works best for their state, public university system or college campus.
Requiring a single college course will not solve the problem of civic literacy alone. But it is an attainable first step. The more trustees, legislators and college leaders treat civic knowledge as an important part of undergraduate education, the better off their students — and the nation as a whole — will be.
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