Nothing to argue with there. The large increase in students participating in service is one of the best developments of the 1990s, and schools have seemed to encourage the trend.
So I was surprised to find that many prestigious colleges and universities talk a big game, but shirk their responsibilities in this area, particularly when it comes to transforming work-study into service-study. Some are so hypocritical–and so anxious for cheap student labor to wash dishes and shelve books–that they are in clear violation of federal law. Meanwhile, the lobbyists who represent higher education in Washington struck a bargain they couldn’t keep.
Proof? A project sponsored by The Washington Monthly and Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism has created a new, highly instructive college-ranking system based on enrollment in ROTC, the Peace Corps and percentage of work-study students who pay off their college loans with community service. The results are eye-opening. (To see where your college ranks, go to washingtonmonthly.com)
BEST SCHOOLS PERFORM WORST
“What the numbers show,” writes Joshua Green, “is that when it comes to community service, the nation’s best schools perform the worst.”
Some brief legislative history: In 1964, Congress created the Federal Work-Study Program. The original idea was that students would work off their student loans with community service. For a time, they did, but eventually schools began employing students in dining halls, academic departments, libraries and elsewhere on campus. The local tutoring program or senior citizen center didn’t get the help.
By the late 1980s and early 1990s, Sens. Sam Nunn and Harris Wofford were pushing to return the program to its origins by requiring at least half of work-study to be service-study. The GOP watered that down to just 5 percent (rising to 7 percent this year). Some schools, like the University of California, Riverside, (51 percent), Florida Memorial College (59.2 percent) and Case Western Reserve (40 percent) come in much higher than required by law.
But several of the very best schools in the country are pathetic. MIT, located in Cambridge, Mass., where Harvard does its part and the social needs are great, devotes just 1.9 percent of its work-study budget to community service. Notre Dame, 3.6 percent. They are among 147 schools in violation of the law.
Of the top 20 liberal arts schools in U.S. News and World Report’s annual ranking, only Stanford was also in the top 20 schools in service-study. This suggests, among other things, that U.S. News reconfigure its standards of excellence.
In the week since the study was first posted, many schools have been running for cover. Some have admitted error, others offer excuses. One common excuse is that volunteering is preferable to using service to pay off student loans. The only problem with that argument is that the community organizations themselves say it isn’t true. They explain that the service-study students are more reliable and committed than occasional volunteers, because it’s more like an actual job to them.
BOTTOM LINE: MONEY
The real reason for the poor performance is easy enough to figure: money. Many colleges and universities don’t want to pay people to wash dishes or answer phones when they can get indebted students to handle those part-time jobs. This hurts the community in two ways, by providing fewer low-wage jobs and less service. Conversely, by moving more toward service-study, the schools could accomplish two noble social ends at once–hiring people off welfare to work low-wage jobs on campus, and sending their idealistic students out to work in the community.
This issue should be of interest to the Bush White House, which has made a big deal out of teaching kids to read. It turns out the higher-ed lobby pulled a fast one back in 1994. In exchange for fewer work-study requirements, the colleges and universities pledged to provide 100,000 tutors for the America Reads program begun in the Clinton administration. According to Green, they’ve never topped 30,000.
There’s a lot of talk in the nonprofit world of moving “to scale” or “leveraging” growth. If colleges can ever be properly tapped, reading instruction–and other service projects–could expand rapidly. Campus service-study is the great potential multiplier of the national-service movement.
I don’t mean to stigmatize all American colleges and universities. Many are doing their part. But in Community Service 101, where most schools should be getting A’s, the landscape is strewn with C’s, D’s and even F’s.
