This paper explores how civic engagement as an important dimension of public engagement in higher education has been slow to develop in the UK, despite an important history dating from the "civic universities" in the nineteenth century. I specifically consider the development of "service learning" as an important way in which the values and practices of democratic citizenship can be embedded in the curriculum of higher education. Finally, I examine how the decline of the ideal of "public service" in the UK provides some significant barriers to the re-development of the civic university.