Mass Higher Education and its Civic Impacts in Portugal and Spain

One group of important higher education’s external benefits are civic ones which include but transcend political participation. These include aspects such as greater trust in institutions or other individuals and the willingness to tolerate and accept differences per se or minority groups. These are particularly relevant in countries such as Portugal and Spain where democratic regimes are more recent. In this article, we analyze the relevance of mass higher education in Portugal and Spain by comparing groups within the same cohort that have different levels of education with older cohorts with different levels of education but who were born before the transition to democracy. The results show that higher education is a major factor contributing to stronger political and civic engagement, and to higher levels of trust and tolerance, and that its importance persisted despite the massive expansion in higher education. This should become a major part of the debate about rationales for public funding of higher education, especially in times of growing inequalities and tensions.