Higher education and active citizenship in five European countries: How institutions, fields of study and types of degree shape the political participation of graduates

Abstract

Higher education is expected to contribute to graduates becoming active citizens of democratic societies. Still, little is known about how heterogeneities within higher education are connected to political participation. This study centres on differences in the type of institution, kind of degree and field of study and their relationship with variations in political participation. Considering five European countries – Austria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Malta and Norway – it investigates how civic skills and social background explain differences in political participation. The results indicate an impact of higher education characteristics on political participation. University graduates, master’s-level graduates and graduates in humanities and social sciences have higher participation levels. Counter-intuitively, there is no universal association of civic skills with participation. The comparative perspective reveals that mechanisms differ by country. Norway, as a less segregated country, shows a weaker association of political participation and type of institution than Austria, as a more segregated country.

Justice in Achievement Matters: The Fairness of Educational Opportunities and Active Citizenship

“…In order to increase the reliability of their findings, some scholars have undertaken more sophisticated-both theoretically and empirically/statistically-analyses. Thus, the relationship between education and active citizenship has been specified for different types of education: formal (Campbell 2006;Hoskins et al 2008), higher education (Kam and Palmer 2011;Veugelers et al 2014Veugelers et al , 2017Mühleck and Hadjar 2023), and lifelong and adult education (Holford and van der Veen 2006;Zepke 2013;Lodigiani 2010;Kersh et al 2021). These authors also try not to limit themselves to one model, but are rather testing different models dealing with education's impact on various dimensions of active citizenship.…”

“…There are also increasing theoretical and empirical contributions to the literature on how university practices affect student participation in academic governance and how this promotes their political behaviour outside of the university (Yang and Hoskins 2020). Mühleck and Hadjar (2023) focus on how heterogeneities within higher education in terms of differences in the type of institution, kind of degree, and field of study are related to variations in political participation. Their results indicate that mechanisms that are behind the association between higher education and political participation differ by country, e.g., the association of political participation and type of institution is weaker in Norway, a less segregated country than Austria.…”

“…Data show that among individuals with higher education, the highest rate of civic engagement is in France (24.6%), and the lowest rate is in Cyprus (2.1%), and several countries (Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia) are far below the EU-28 average. Using a comparative perspective, other authors (Mühleck and Hadjar 2023) demonstrate that there is no universal association between civic skills and civic participation, and that it is stronger or weaker depending on specific country features. Keeping in mind these results, in our study, we will analyse the mediating role of some country-specific characteristics such as GDP, democratic regime, and cultural values in the associations between subjective assessments of fairness in educational opportunities and active citizenship.…”

“…These mixed findings about the relationship between education and active citizenship have provoked scholars to take into account the specificities of education beyond length or degree by investigating in their analyses, for example, how differences in the type of institution and field of study in higher education relate to political engagement (Mühleck and Hadjar 2023). Despite the increased level of education among the global population, inequalities in the opportunities that individuals from different social backgrounds have to reach the required educational level remain quite significant (Mare 1981;Blossfeld and Shavit 1993;Lucas 2001;Pfeffer 2008;Ilieva-Trichkova and Boyadjieva 2014).…”