Integration or fragmentation? College student citizenship in the global society

Abstract

Globalization has led to a societal shift toward increased emphasis on the position of individuals in the transnational context and decreased focus on distinct, but unified, national identities. This shift has led scholars to question the relevancy and effectiveness of education as a mechanism of democracy and national unification as prominently outlined in the philosophical writings of John Dewey. However, student citizenship patterns in the context of the contemporary global society have yet to be clearly identified and adequately studied from a quantitative perspective. Accordingly, we analyze national data extracted from the 2005 College Senior Survey to examine college student citizenship in terms of integration and fragmentation. The results of our exploratory cluster analysis lead us to offer four propositions on college student citizenship in the current era of globalization.

Keywords:

• student citizenship
• democratic education
• globalization
• multiculturalism

Notes

In this study, we consider private, nonprofit colleges and universities to be representative of the US public system of higher education. Although private nonprofit colleges and universities in the United States are not governed by state agencies or bodies, these institutions receive notable state and federal funds and subsidies through student financial aid awards, research and service grants, and other governmental programs. In other words, these private colleges and universities commonly rely on government funding and therefore commonly benefit from and contribute to the public system of higher education.

1. The auto-clustering algorithm indicated that a three cluster solution minimized the BIC value. Three clusters were chosen because the silhouette measure of cohesion and separation provided by SPSS (silhouette coefficient = .4) indicated that the cluster quality was fair. The silhouette coefficient ranges between 0 and 1, the closer to 1 the better.