Princeton may enjoy a reputation for furnishing undergraduates with four years of rigorous academics, but when it comes to U.S. civics, students walk out of FitzRandolph Gate knowing less than they did as incoming freshmen, a new survey suggests.
In a 60-question multiple choice quiz conducted last fall by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI), Princeton seniors scored lower than Princeton freshmen.
First-year students at the University got an average of 63.6 percent of the questions right — the fifth-lowest score among 50 colleges and universities quizzed — while seniors fared even worse, averaging a score of 61.9 percent. The University was one of eight institutions where seniors scored lower than freshmen.
The quiz, which included questions about American history, politics, economics and basic political philosophy, was administered last fall to 14,000 seniors at 50 colleges and universities. Twenty-five of the institutions were "elite" schools, and the other 25 were randomly selected.
Harvard seniors scored highest, getting an average of 69.6 percent of questions right, while Princeton ranked 11th, with seniors correctly answering 61.9 percent of the questions.
But the average senior scored below 55 percent, and fewer than half correctly identified the phrase, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal" as from the Declaration of Independence.
ISI, a politically conservative organization that urges colleges and universities to "educate for liberty," supports core academic requirements and seeks to publicize what it considers to be instances of political correctness run amok in academia. One of the programs it operates, the Collegiate Network, helps fund a number of conservative campus publications, including the Princeton Tory.
In its report on last fall's quiz results, ISI claimed that college students' shaky performances stem from a lack of civics courses. "Students generally gain one point of civic knowledge for each civics course taken," the report said. It also claimed that "seniors whose parents had intact marriages learned more about America during college than seniors whose parents did not."
Some Princeton professors questioned the report's claims. "Surveying is a very complicated business," history department chair Jeremy Adelman said. "I'd really want to know a lot more about the methodology behind this." He added that "the University has decided to require one history class of all graduating seniors. A lot of thought went into this, and we have a lot of other distribution requirements, and this was the result of a consensus."
Though he admitted that "as a historian, I want more people learning about history," Adelman said he does not think the survey results indicate a crisis in American higher education, adding that he doubts the report's findings would apply to history majors.
"Not knowing is not the same as being ignorant," he said. "And if we can teach our students that there's a distinction between the two, then I think we have done a good job. I have a feeling that some people who ran that survey don't understand."
But Michael Andrews, director of the Jack Miller Institute at ISI, said the report illuminates serious problems in American higher education. He added that colleges should help students in all majors do better on questions like those asked in the survey.
"One of the things that every student at Princeton shares is that one thing we have in common, [which] is that we are all citizens," Andrews said. "Thus, some basic knowledge about the basic founding of the country is absolutely essential."
Other University professors were skeptical of both the report's conclusions and the institute's motivations. Wilson School professor Stanley Katz said the survey is "very silly" and "one of a long series sponsored and publicized by conservative groups, of which the [ISI] is one of the most persistent."
"The intentions of the people at ISI are political," he added, noting that the organization is affiliated with Princeton's James Madison Program, which often brings conservative scholars and speakers to campus.
Politics professor and Madison Program director Robert George did not respond to requests for an interview.
Andrews said that the ISI will administer the quiz again in the future.
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