TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/020689/02068900.042

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 6.2 KB | 119 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 32

The Gap Between Will and Wallet


Should 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.