Why Do Students Enroll in Political Science Courses?

Abstract

Why do students enroll in political science courses? I conducted an experiment designed to test the appeal of three possible motivations: students might hope to develop valuable skills, look for a better grasp of current events, or expect a deeper understanding of how the world works and their place within it. The experiment involved visiting several sections of Introduction to American Government courses. In each section, I advertised a political science course offered in the following semester. However, I varied the way in which the course was described and subsequently tracked whether students enrolled in it. I find that highlighting opportunities to develop skills does not have a significant effect on enrollment. In contrast, emphasizing “how the world works” is most effective at increasing enrollment. Qualitative evidence suggests that students are attracted to this type of course because it offers the opportunity for personal development and growth.

Applying War Heritage in the National World War II History Course for College Students in China: An Exploration of Digitization Strategies

“…In addition, it can even result in producing negative emotions and behaviors, such as irritability, anxiety, rejection, and absenteeism [7][8][9]. Furthermore, with respect to this, Bunte [10] also found that the low popularity of political science courses is a common phenomenon in colleges across the globe. In order to change this depressing phenomenon, certain scholars from China advocated that the heritage of World War II, such as battlefield sites and other material evidence, should be converted into digital teaching resources and applied to the teaching of WWII history courses [11,12].…”

Bringing (inter)national history into ‘Introduction to International Relations’

“…Second, studying this period offers instructors the chance to bring historically marginalised groups and under-studied topics into IR. Such topics -especially Native dispossession and resistance (Szarejko 2021;Wadsworth 2014) and Black liberation struggles (Anievas et al 2015; Koomen 2019) -can t provide students with historical context and new ways of thinking about the current questions of race, identity and social justice that students so often want to discuss (Bunte 2019;Towler et al 2020). In other words, a seemingly familiar history can be used to expose students to a broader range of actors than they might expect to encounter in an IR class and to challenge biases in the discipline (Cook 2019).…”