Permanent link for article #0082:
12-04-2009
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Slippery Rock University">
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Subject: New Government Program Pays Students For Community Service
As reported by Mike Madden in the Slippery Rock University's newspaper,
The Online Rocket, The government is extending its national
service claws into universities by paying college students to perform
community service work.
A new government program has been enacted that'll pay students
for doing community service and reimburse them for some of the
costs that come with achieving a post-secondary education.
The new program, the American Opportunity Tax Credit, will pay
a maximum of $2,500 to students for their efforts in community
service and in the classroom.
The students must be at least part-time and serve 100 hours.
The program is part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment
Act of 2009, which was passed by President Barack Obama in
February.
[...]
The act will require the education secretary and the treasury
secretary to calculate whether the community service facet of
the program is pragmatic.
"Very few students are worth $25 an hour for community service,
especially when it is unknown as to what constitutes 'community
service,'" said Lauren Wilhelm, a senior political science
major.
"Can I be paid $25 an hour for picking up garbage along I-79?
Do I have to go to a government sanctioned body to oversee my
community service?"
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As economics major Matt Ligman comments later in the article:
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"For students to potentially get upwards of $20 an hour for
maybe just doing community service seems like a lot. There
are a lot of men and women who have been working their
entire lives and don't make that much. It doesn't really
teach hard work."
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Even this student can see the folly in this. But no one seems to be
asking the really important question. "If this program doesn't
teach hard work, then what does it achieve?" The only answer is
that it makes more people both wards of and servants to the state, by
getting them to rely upon the government to provide for an ever
widening sphere of their wants and needs in exchange for a willingness
to do the government's bidding.
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