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- NATION, Page 32The Gap Between Will and WalletShould students perform national service to pay for college?
- By Walter Shapiro
-
-
- National service -- the image of a vast civilian army of
- fresh-faced young people embarking on a crusade of good works --
- has always held romantic appeal for adults safely beyond draft age.
- Utopian visionary Edward Bellamy originally broached the notion
- more than a century ago. Philosopher William James alluded to it
- in his famous 1910 essay, "The Moral Equivalent of War." Franklin
- Roosevelt in 1943 spoke of a postwar America where young adults
- would make a "year's contribution of service to the Government."
- At the height of the Viet Nam buildup, Defense Secretary Robert
- McNamara proposed compulsory national service as a remedy for the
- inequities of the military draft. Now, amid the first stirrings of
- a rebirth of altruism, the idea has been revived by congressional
- Democrats eager to inspire what Georgia Senator Sam Nunn calls "a
- new spirit of citizenship and civic obligation in America."
-
- Voluntary national service has long been widely popular; in an
- early 1988 Gallup poll, 83% of those surveyed endorsed the concept.
- The problem is that given free choice, few 18-year-olds are likely
- to sign on at subsistence wages to empty bedpans or monitor naptime
- in day-care centers. Existing state and local programs that foster
- community-service apprenticeships have been unable to tap the
- wellsprings of middle-class idealism; in 1987 almost all the 7,000
- young adults enrolled in such programs came from low-income
- families. The sad truth is that any major commitment to national
- service requires either a pay scale much higher than McDonald's or
- the heavy hand of federal coercion.
-
- Last week Nunn and an ideologically diverse group of Democratic
- legislators kicked off the most ambitious drive for national
- service in more than a generation. They envision a Citizens Corps
- that would enlist as many as 1 million young high school graduates
- to spend at least a year working for $100 a week in places like
- hospices and homeless shelters in their local communities. The
- volunteers would also have the option of entering the armed forces
- at wage rates significantly below those of regular soldiers. The
- national-service proposal -- originally developed by sociologist
- Charles Moskos and the Democratic Leadership Council -- is poised
- between threat and reward. "It's just this side of compulsion,"
- says Moskos, who teaches at Northwestern University, "but we don't
- cross the line."
-
- The crux of the Nunn plan is the draconian requirement that by
- the mid-1990s, aspiring college students (with a few narrowly drawn
- exceptions) would have to serve in the civilian or military
- branches of the Citizens Corps before they could receive federal
- aid for higher education. No altruism, no college degree -- except
- for those youngsters from families rich enough to pay full tuition.
- The other half of the bargain consists of a generous educational
- stipend: a $10,000 voucher for each year of civilian service or
- $24,000 after a two-year military hitch.
-
- The sponsors of the Citizens Corps acknowledge that the
- proposal may need to be modified to meet political and practical
- objections. "But what makes this plan workable is the connection
- between benefits and service," argues Oklahoma Congressman Dave
- McCurdy. "If there is a simpler way to go to college that doesn't
- require service, it's human nature that people will take it."
-
- Not surprisingly, congressional defenders of existing
- higher-education programs are militantly opposed to the punitive
- aspects of the Nunn plan. In response to critics who contend that
- the legislation is inequitable, Nunn counters that "poor people now
- are being hurt because they will be indentured for many, many years
- paying back college loans." Yet the price tag for the Federal
- Government may also be an obstacle in an era of budget austerity.
- Even though the Nunn plan is predicated on cashing in much of the
- nearly $5 billion currently spent on grants to college students,
- there are as yet no hard estimates of the Citizen Corps's actual
- cost. Using small-scale state voluntary-service programs as a
- model, Moskos theorizes that $5 billion would cover roughly 500,000
- civilian participants.
-
- But something important is lost if the debate over the Nunn
- plan is limited to this narrow terrain. The revival of interest in
- national service raises philosophical questions that cut to the
- heart of American democracy. What civic obligations do young adults
- have to the nation in time of peace? Does the Government have the
- right to use its powers to compel individual good works? Should the
- opportunity to pursue higher education be an entitlement, or should
- it be transformed into a reward for Government-sanctioned behavior?
-
- Americans have always been rightfully chary about unnecessary
- governmental coercion. Yet there is a consensus that the recent
- expansion of the concept of individual rights has eroded a sense
- of collective responsibility. Whether it is AIDS patients dying
- alone, neglected children or the isolated elderly, there are
- problems that erode the civic compact and cannot be solely remedied
- by conventional Government programs. And while national service is
- unlikely to replicate the diversity of a World War II Army platoon,
- it could lessen some of the barriers of social class and race that
- divide Americans. As Maryland Senator Barbara Mikulski puts it,
- "You know you've changed when maybe for the first time in your life
- you think about somebody other than yourself."
-
- National service should not be regarded as a painless panacea
- for all these ills of materialism gone amuck. Nor should the
- heavy-handed coercion of the Nunn plan be regarded as the only
- model. Mikulski, for example, is working on a $2 billion program
- that would trade a $3,000 annual educational voucher for part-time
- community service. Whatever the framework, national service holds
- the potential to help bridge the chasm between will and wallet.
- Maybe after a century the time is finally ripe for a bold new
- experiment in American idealism.