Campus Labs released a new report, Student Engagement as a Political Catalyst, which documents civic engagement within student organizations on college campuses over the past five academic years.
As part of their research, Campus Labs, an organization that aims to “transform higher education through the use of data,” conducted two separate analyses. One aspect of the research focused on traditional party-based student groups while the other focused on issue-based student organizations, who were not directly affiliated with political parties.
After analyzing 93,920 student organizations, Campus Labs’ results discovered that college students prefer to join issue-based organizations rather than traditional party-based organizations. The 397 institutions from 46 different states who were chosen to participate in the study are part of Campus Labs’ student engagement platform.
According to Campus Labs, issue-based organizations allow students to be surrounded by “like-minded individuals [in order] to pursue gains in an area of personal interest.”
Issue-based groups can cover a variety of topics such as the economy, international affairs or the environment. The report focused on organizations such as a surf club, which extends farther than getting together to surfing. A surf club also focuses on the environmental impact on beaches such as pollution.
“I think traditional political parties have not been great about showing why their views or beliefs, in the way they operate, is relevant to the traditional 18-24 year old college age,” said Dr. Will Miller, who is Campus Labs’ assistant vice president of campus adoption and author of the report.
The research identified 3,184 party-based student organizations and 13,741 issue-based student organizations. Additionally, of those students who identified themselves with a party-based group, 60 percent were Democrats while almost 20 percent were Republicans.
