MEDILL NEWS SERVICE SPECIAL REPORT
Even If Colleges Don't Push Community Service, Students Volunteer At High Rates
By DEANNA ZAMMIT
MEDILL NEWS SERVICE

WASHINGTON - You don't often find shantytowns built on pastoral college quads or students sleeping in refrigerator boxes just steps from heated dorm rooms with cable TV and ping pong tables.

But on one cold October night this year, 15 students at the College of Wooster in Northern Ohio spent the night in these rustic accommodations as part of a Habitat for Humanity fundraiser. Not a single one was paid for the effort, though it might have looked better for the college if they were.

Though student volunteerism has been on the rise for at least a decade, some schools are struggling to integrate that spirit into the federal work-study program. The College of Wooster is one of 219 colleges that failed to comply with the requirement that at least 5 percent of their federal work-study budgets be used to pay students to do community service during the 1999-2001 school year.

"There are schools that are just at the 7 percent level ... but that have very strong community service programs that don't run through the federal work-study program," said Patricia Boylan, spokeswoman for Campus Compact, a national coalition of 750 college and university presidents committed to civic service.

Among them are University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind., where federal aid administrators managed to dedicate just 1.7 percent of their work-study budget to paid community service jobs. Students there operate the most active chapter of Habitat for Humanity in the country, building one house for poor families every year using only money they raised, said Habitat for Humanity program coordinator Melanie Pfennig.

At the College of Wooster, nearly 350 students volunteer regularly through the Volunteer Network, said senior Chuck Nussbaum. Students tutor delinquent boys and young men and help out at homeless shelters and homes for battered women, he said. The school offers free housing to students who donate eight hours of community service a week, said senior Jennifer Boring.

Nussbaum and Boring are not alone. Studies have shown that student volunteerism has grown markedly over the past 15 years. In 1988, 35 percent of Americans aged 18 to 24 volunteered, according to Independent Sector, a coalition of nonprofit organizations. By 1999, that rate had grown to 46 percent. Other studies have shown that 60 to 81 percent of college students volunteered in 2000.

This year, the College of Wooster met the new 7 percent requirement, but it is still struggling to make students aware that they can be paid for volunteering, said Financial Aid director Sharon Bodle.

"We didn't really want to publicize the fact that people can get paid for volunteering," said Chuck Nussbaum, chairman of the school's volunteer network. Financial aid administrators asked Nussbaum to spread the word about paid community service this year, he said. But he and network board members decided against it.

"We have a lot of students that make large commitments and don't really get anything in return, and we didn't want to start an argument between the two factions," said Nussbaum.

University officials across the country are counting spirited community service among their arguments against a proposal by Sens. John McCain, an Arizona Republican, and Evan Bayh, an Indiana Democrat, to increase the percentage of federal work-study money spent on community service jobs to 25 percent.

"College presidents want to see an increase in community service, they just don't want it to be regulated by the federal government. They want to work it out on their own," said Boylan.

Increasing paid community service jobs won't necessarily increase volunteerism rates. Instead, it could tear a hole in the pockets of universities that use work-study students as cheap labor to run administrative offices, cafeterias and libraries, Boylan said.

If a quarter of those workers were funneled into off-campus jobs, the schools would have to hire nonstudent employees and pay 100 percent of their wage rather than the 25 percent they pay under the work-study program, she said.

"Besides, it's not really volunteering if you're paid," Boring said.

Graphics
Graphic of Best/Worst Schools

Graphic of Top 20 U.S. Schools and Their work-study percentage spent on community service

Graphic of Best States

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