Response: Serve or Fail

The article Server or Fail, by Dave Eggers of The New York Times presents a very interesting take on college students and their free time. Eggers believes that colleges should institute a service requirement for students to graduate. Due to his college experience he considers college students to have too much spare time, which is wasted on silly electives or just wasted. With this surplus of time students should contribute to the community around themselves to develop intellectual tools that will be helpful to their careers post-graduation. The primary problem with making service a necessity is that it exchanges one requirement for another.
Students already have too many requirements for college making college careers last longer needed, even Eggers agrees with this. Every student has to take certain learning requirements and many students have no need or will to even attend these courses. Learning requirements such as, Oceanography and Psychology are the issue. Students have no interest in these classes and just do the bare minimum to pass. In addition, students are not forced into taking whiffle ball or Cricket as a requirement as it might seem from this article. Those types of classes are electives that students choose if they would like to take them. This proposal just substitutes classes for work, which is not much different.
Many students would not want to be there in the first place, which leads to bad service for the community. Students would be on their phones, giving half effort or goofing around if this was made a requirement. Serving a community should be your choice and not an obligation. If helping out at a retirement home or tutoring children would be good for a student’s degree or resume, then he or she should seek that out on their own time. Students would have to pay for this in their tuition fees if it is done through the college. Paying to help your community is the ultimate oxymoron.
This idea would not work because some students would be