Barack Obama released his national service plan today, which is really good all the way around. However, I would like to nerd out on one aspect of the plan, which was actually the topic of my undergraduate thesis at Vassar: community service and the federal work study program. Obama’s plan says:

Promote College Serve-Study by immediately increasing the percentage of Federal Work-Study Program funding that goes to community service jobs from 7 percent to 25 percent, and helping colleges and universities reach a goal of 50 percent of serve-study over time.

This is a bit of an obscure program, but it is really cool. Forgive me if I screw up any details, it has been almost five years since I wrote my thesis.

The Federal College Work Study program helps college students work part time jobs through their college, helping them pay for school. The vast majority of students work on-campus jobs, cleaning jock straps at the gym, serving food at the cafeteria or the like. This ends up being a huge subsidy for schools, because they basically have the federal government paying their students to do work on campus that they would have to otherwise hire out. Now, the government did put some strings on it. They mandated that 7% of all of the funding go to paying students to do community service jobs, like working at the local shelter or food bank. It is a fantastic and rewarding way to help kids afford college.

Most colleges actually over-perform on that 7%, and I think the national average is more like 18%. Interestingly there is no correlation between how highly ranked a school is on the USA Today college rankings and how much they use their federal work study dollars for community service jobs. The rich schools are not making an extra effort to get their students to do more service work than the underfunded state schools.

For a number of years legislators including Senator McCain have been pushing to increase the percentage required of schools to be spent on community service jobs. Senator Obama has proposed 25% and a path to 50%. That simply is impossible to mandate at all schools. While universities located in large cities with loads of access to public transport may be able to meet that need, there are simply not enough part time service jobs in rural towns with large schools. Also, there is a huge transportation issue for these students. All most all of these service jobs are located off campus. If you increase the percentage required to be spent on community service jobs then there will need to be a transportation program so that students can actually travel to the jobs. That means a campus pool of cars just for these service jobs and that is not cheap.

It sounds good to say that 50% of these jobs should be for service and not subsidizing universities, but there are practical limitations.