A time tax on undergraduates

S. R. Jones

Over the past year, many political commentators have called for a return of 'community' as a means of creating a fairer society. Many people have noted that, as Britain in general has become more prosperous, we have become more individualistic. At the same time, traditional methods of making people, especially those with greater affluence and more opportunities than most, contribute to society - such as higher taxation - have fallen out of the political reckoning. An alternative, however, might be a 'time tax' or a contract with people who take up educational opportunities that in return they put something back into the community.

There has been a great emphasis on education in recent years with the need to gain qualifications. Since these are the passport to challenging and rewarding careers then that is only right. But the danger of concentrating solely on vocational education is that liberal education - non-academic subjects, current affairs, and other activities which make us into 'rounded people' - tends to fall by the wayside. Although some pupils and students do become involved in extra-curricular activities, this usually has more to do with 'CV-packing' than with any desire to improve society. Students are often apathetic. Although volunteer groups do exist in universities, by and large they only involve a small number of students.

A contract, however, would mean that those in education, who are receiving a service from the taxpayer, and ultimately society, would be obliged to give something back in return. Their work would in the main be some form of community service, though this definition could be wide-ranging. It could involve helping the elderly or patients in hospitals; those in higher education could help in the teaching of children at schools, particularly in institutions which are under-manned; with conservation work and maintenance of public areas generally.

Those in education could assist people who already provide public services. It could also be a condition of the contract that those who have been in education, and are now doing well in employment, could afford some extra time as well, perhaps for a five year period. If higher tax contributors are not forthcoming in today's political climate, perhaps direct labour would be an alternative.

So far, Community Action groups do exist in British universities, which provide some of the services previously described to the local community. The groups are organised locally, yet co-ordination is provided by Student Community Action, the national umbrella body. This could be a good model for the contract scheme - a national government agency could be set up to liaise with universities and other educational establishments to see that students do make a contribution to the locality, in return for receiving educational opportunities. Unlike Community Action, it would not need to rely on the goodwill of volunteers.

This scheme has the potential to provide a lot of good. In the short-term, the influx of students could help to relieve some of the pressure of our over-pressurised public services. In the long-term, students themselves would benefit; the scheme would give them the opportunity to improve their skills in time management, planning, creativity and communication. In addition, the scheme would mean that students would meet people from different backgrounds and this might help make them more tolerant individuals. One of the criticisms of university education is that, despite the boom in numbers since the late 1980s to 30% of 18-year-olds, the student body is still a socially-unrepresentative body of society.

The Labour Party last year floated the idea of a national volunteer service for the young. However, my proposal is bolder in that it specifically targets people in further education who are likely to be successful in later life; it provides a clear link between people's contributions and the benefits to society, and provides an alternative to contributing more tax to a general pool under the banner 'big government', which many people have become distrustful of.

There are bound to be students and professionals who will be opposed to such a scheme - they will need to be persuaded that their effort really will benefit the community, and that they themselves will gain from the scheme. There will also be those who will say this impinges on personal freedom, will take up time and will not improve their education - the scheme must therefore operate on a flexi- time basis, and a high quality, properly funded education system must be guaranteed. If necessary, individuals can opt out with a tax contribution.

S. R. Jones, 63 St. John's Court, New Road, Radcliffe, Manchester M26 INH (tel 0161 742 4122).

Editorial comment

Less bureaucratic might be the excellent model provided by the late Independent Study degree course at the (then) North East London Polytechnic. There, whatever the students were studying, they had to get together each Friday in self-selected small groups; at the outset choosing for themselves a local community problem, brainstorming an imaginative way of tackling this problem, and then spending the rest of the term's Fridays carrying out their action plan. They were evaluated on this community work as an integral part of their degree rating.

A required community component could simply be made a one-or-half-day-a-week part of all degree courses - and of all school courses too. Since 1975 the Institute for Social Inventions has been carrying out workshops of this kind in state schools, with all ages from 5 to 18 - see the Social Inventions Workshops Manual for Schools (£2-50 incl. p&p).

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