Turnout for What? Do Colleges Prepare Informed Voters?

Abstract

One of the traditional aims of higher education is to prepare informed citizens who are civically engaged. Although many voters are underinformed, there are multiple social benefits to having an informed electorate. Therefore, colleges should aspire to not only increase student voter turnout but to prepare informed voters. In this article, I use matching procedures to account for precollege civic engagement and estimate treatment effects of taking at least one community college course. I find that taking political science influences college student voter registration, voter turnout, and ability to correctly answer questions about the roles of U.S. political institutions.