Required Community Service?

[Alex]

This story was prompted by a bit of text written on the Change.gov web site. Originally it said:

Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year.

Being familliar with Obama's proposals I would have read this to be talking about not a universal requirement but a requirement for receiving college tuition assistance. But it was defnitely poorly written.

That text has seen been changed to read (and clarify the intent):

Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by setting a goal that all middle school and high school students do 50 hours of community service a year and by developing a plan so that all college students who conduct 100 hours of community service receive a universal and fully refundable tax credit ensuring that the first $4,000 of their college education is completely free.

I would be opposed to any mandatory service requirement for adults, but that is not what is being proposed. Rather the government saying "You do X we'll reward you with Y."

While I would have some big questions about the operation of such a thing (my high school had a service program in high school for credit and let's just say that the result was a lot of kids doing "service" that didn't help anybody, didn't require any effort, and looked good enough on paper to get some high school credit) I wouldn't be as strongly opposed (and might support depending on the extact program.

Other questions:
- The proposal of $4000 for 100 hours is $40/hour and strikes me as an insane rate of return meaning that in most situations the "volunteers" will be getting higher tax free pay than the people who do the same tasks as their job. It should probably be raised to at least 200 hours (still less than 4 hours/week).
- This seems somewhat regressive. Even with $4000 assistance the worst off students will already be taking full class loads plus real paying jobs. Sure there's still a few stray hours in a week but it is another burden.
- If use is widespread, how does it not just cause further tuition inflation.
- Flooding the market in college towns will push regular employees out of jobs that will then be filled by government paid "volunteers."

My high school experience with such programs doesn't give me much confidence in the real value of including such requirements in middle and high school curriculums but I don't really have a problem with them trying.