Date posted: 2-20-01

Editors: You are encouraged to use this story in your publication. Please credit the author and DeKalb News Service as shown. And, please send two tearsheets to: Jim Killam, Department of Communication, Watson Hall, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL 60115.

Study: Political interest in college decreases

By Bob Nelson

DeKalb News Service

DeKALB -- John Gennaro notices the trend among his fellow students.
"I don't know too many students who follow politics at all," he said. "Most of them just don't care."
Gennaro, a senior marketing major at NIU who interned in Sen. Dick Durbin's (D-Ill.) office in Washington, D.C. last summer, says college students just have too much on their minds, an opinion supported by a recent study.
Political involvement among college freshmen has reached an all-time low, according to a study published in The Chronicle of Higher Education.
The Jan. 26 article reports "26 percent of entering college students reported an interest in keeping up to date with political affairs." This is the lowest level since the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA began conducting the annual survey in 1966, when the figure was 60.3 percent. The study also showed a shift among freshman toward the political left.
Jason Akst, director of communications for NIU's Center for Governmental Studies and an NIU journalism instructor, says he notices the trend in DeKalb.
He began teaching at NIU in fall 2000, and he was "shocked at how unaware of political issues and figures students were." He frequently gave his classes current-events quizzes, and he recalls one instance when only two students of about 25 knew who Yasser Arafat was.
Politically active in high school and college, Akst remembers working at his local Democratic headquarters in 1976 during Jimmy Carter's presidential campaign. He contends that students were more politically aware when he was in college than they are now, in spite of the fact that "it's become steadily easier to become registered to vote…and be informed."
"Perhaps students today are more focused on popular culture than political culture," he said.
NIU Political Science Professor Mikel Wyckoff doesn't think the trend is that noticeable. He began teaching at NIU in 1982 and says that students' political interests are always "uneven and unpredictable."
"I don't know that I see much less," Wyckoff said.
One trend he has noticed is the dropping enrollments in the political science department at NIU and across the country steadily over the past decades. Although there could be many hypotheses as to why that is, "One major thing is that the Cold War has come to an end," he said.
When asked how students today compare to those when he graduated from University of Kansas in 1969, he said, "The bulk of people weren't vastly different in their activism than I see today."
The results of the study were based on 269,413 students surveyed at 434 four-year colleges and universities.

Source List
· "Looking Inward, Freshman care less about politics and more about money." The Chronicle of Higher Education: Jan. 26, 2001
· Mikel Wyckoff, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Political Science: 753-7039
· Jason Akst, Director of Communications, NIU Center for Governmental Studies; Professor, Basic News Writing. 753-9677
· John Gennaro, NIU student.