Making a difference? Student volunteerism,service learning and higher education in the USA

This paper reviews evidence concerning the recent growth of volunteerism among college students in the USA. It describes the various pressures to expand such activities and outlines steps being taken to promote them. Reforms of student financial aid can be used to facilitate service among students who would otherwise have to engage in substantial paid work to afford education, while educational institutions are taking numerous steps, most notably through integrating community service and academic study, to promote such involvement. The more general issues raised by all this are: the likely impacts on servers and served of this activity; whether education-based community service has demonstrable educational benefits; its impact on higher education institutions; and the wider impacts in terms of political attitudes and behaviour.