THE HIGHER EDUCATION CITIZENSHIP CURRICULUM: AN ANALYSIS OF FIRST-CYCLE BOLOGNA STUDY PROGRAMMES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF LJUBLJANA

The traditional view of higher education inherently assumes that students will become critical and deliberative citizens, capable of understanding and participating in society. There is an abundance of normative considerations regarding the role of higher education in democracy and in the creation of good citizens; however, empirical scrutiny of the curriculums for citizenship education in higher education is sporadic and limited. This article attempts to fill this gap by analysing higher education curriculums in terms of content, focusing on formal, rather than non-formal or informal, curriculums. Although this approach omits certain affective-behavioural and cognitive dimensions that are at least equally important as the formal curriculum, it does reveal (a) the scope and (b) the depths of citizenship content in the higher education curriculum. By applying the framework developed by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement for the analysis of citizenship education, we analysed the entire set of undergraduate study programmes of the University of Ljubljana (Bologna first cycle). The analysis of 140 selected study programmes reveals (a) that disciplinarity is a strong predictor for the extent of coverage of citizenship content and (b) that the covered content is imbalanced in favour of civic society and systems, demonstrating a disregard for civic principles, civic participation and civic identities.