ABSTRACT
Next-generation engagement scholars and their scholarship are part of a broad, rich, and complex history of American higher education. This chapter provides a concise overview of the last 30 years as seen through the lens of the civic mission of higher education. In particular, it features the emergence of a civic engagement movement that has reinvigorated and advanced the democratic purposes of higher education. As contributors to this movement, the authors have been part of its history and offer their perspective as a way of understanding the past in order to empower those who now shape—and those who will shape—the future of civic engagement and the future of higher education. Discontent drives movements, and the early 1980s were troubled times for American higher education. The US economy was weak, and a projected demographic decline in college students led some experts to predict that as many as one third of colleges and universities might face merger or closure.
