Let's Tie College Aid To Altruistic Service

September 22, 1985|By Mary McGrory, Universal Press Syndicate

WASHINGTON — At last, a new idea. Let us today salute educator Frank Newman, who has come up with one that is also good.

Newman, former president of the University of Rhode Island, wrote a report for the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in which he puts forward a notion that could benefit our college youth and the rest of the country as well.

His proposal: The federal government should curtail its massive loan program for college students and require them to perform community service work in exchange for financial aid.

Everyone knows that youth has stopped being young. Newman suggests one of the reasons: They are so saddled with huge loan debts that they think about money most of the time. Their dreams are of stock portfolios; their risks are connected with breaking into corporate computer codes; they can't even be lighthearted any more.

When you think of what has happened under the Guaranteed Student Loan Program of 1965, you realize the force of the cynical axiom that ''no good deed goes unpunished.'' Congress had the laudable intention of putting a college education within reach of everyone who aspired to one. It certainly never meant to make our youth prematurely old and selfish.

In the '60s a majority of students, when asked why they wanted to go to college, said they wanted to improve the world or make themselves better people. Today 75 percent say starkly that they want to make more money.

Newman tells us why. Indebted college students know they will not be able to contribute to the common good once they have their diplomas. They cannot afford to take low-paying community service and public-sector jobs. Says Newman in the report, ''A student who leaves college with a large debt burden may well feel he has already assumed all the risk that he possibly should.''

Of course, some indebted graduates solve the problem of repayment by becoming deadbeats. But skipping out on the bill does not add to a sense of self-worth or the ability to look other people in the eye, two of the intangible goals of higher education.

Newman's plan is an adaptation of the ROTC program to civilian uses. ROTC students have their college paid. In return, they must do weekend drill and upon graduation serve four years in the military.

This program could answer the crying need for teachers. Students could pay back their government loans by spending a weekend a month in teacher training, or by spending a summer in a ghetto school bringing children up to grade level in reading and math. Upon graduation, they would give back four years of college by teaching.

Newman thinks students will respond if someone asks them, that they will tutor poor children; read aloud to old people and ferry them to the grocery store and to the doctor's office; and generally lend a hand.

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