“How Colleges Can Increase Civic Engagement”

Young people are much less likely to participate in politics. Universities are expected to help remedy this problem. How can they do so? The answer remains unclear, as studies typically test one or two small interventions at a time, or the interventions have a voluntary, opt-in component. Yet universities have the capacity to use potentially more effective, bundled and opt-out “nudges”. In this study we leverage universities’ bureaucratic power to implement such interventions. We test the effects of a bundle of cognitive behavioral nudges embedded in a simulated university administrative check-in required of all students. We find that this intervention meaningfully increases turnout. It also has beneficial spillovers to other political attitudes and actions. The role of higher education in a robust democracy is not limited to teaching or service learning. It extends to the institutional power of universities to structure the choice environment to facilitate the actions people wish to take but often find difficult.