Conference Agenda

In the context of increasing democratic challenges, social fragmentation and complex socio-ecological transformations, higher education (HE) is being called upon to renew its democratic mission. European policy frameworks, including the Council of Europe’s Learners First - Education for Today’s and Tomorrow’s Democratic Societies (2024 - 2030), emphasise the need to prepare learners as active, responsible participants in democratic life who can contribute to inclusive, sustainable and pluralistic societies. At the same time, the CoE’s Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (RFCDC) has highlighted persistent difficulties in integrating and assessing competences for democratic culture in HE. This raises the question of how HE can more clearly define, foster and measure such competences, pointing to the need to rethink educational goals and curricula so that democratic competences become a cross-cutting feature of study programmes.

One influential attempt to conceptualise the relationship between HE, academic learning and civic responsibility is the notion of the “civic-minded graduate” (CMG), developed in the US context (Bringle et al., 2011). However, its conceptual scope remains insufficiently aligned with European policy frameworks. It does not fully reflect the centrality of democratic culture, human rights, pluralism and sustainability in European agendas, nor does it sufficiently engage with questions of power, inequality and systemic transformation that are central to contemporary debates on democratic education.

Developed within the RE:LEARN project (NextGenerationEU), this paper introduces the concept of a European civic-minded graduate. It aligns the CMG model with key European competence frameworks, particularly the RFCDC, and builds on recent initiatives such as EngageComp. We position the European civic-minded graduate both as an educational construct guiding learning outcomes, curriculum design and teaching practices, and as a research construct supporting the development of empirical tools for assessing democratic competences. This way, the concept speaks simultaneously to curriculum development and to current gaps in measuring the impact of pedagogies such as service-learning.

Building on a synthesis of CMG literature and European frameworks, we propose a multidimensional competence model structured around four domains: knowledge and critical understanding, skills, values and attitudes. Together, these define the European civic-minded graduate as a democratically competent, sustainability-oriented actor capable of navigating and transforming complex, pluralistic societies.

We argue that this framework can inform future educational goals, curriculum development and teaching pedagogies across disciplines. In addition, it highlights the role of service-learning and allied pedagogies in fostering European civic-minded graduates and advancing democratic culture within (European) HE curricula and institutions.