Many graduating seniors find that serving the community is more appealing than entering the job market or embarking on the track of graduate education immediately after receiving an undergraduate degree.
The increasing popularity of service programs such as Teach for America or the Peace Corps is likely due to both the bleak state of the economy and the encouragement from President Obama’s policies and political discourse, said Bruce Cain, executive director of the University of California Washington Center.
He added that discerning the relative influence of the policy changes and the economy is difficult.
The Obama administration has emphasized the importance of the service sector through repeated references to the importance of service and recent legislation such as the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act.
The act pledged to increase the size of AmeriCorps, create new service programs and augment the amount of funding delegated to the service sector.
Kate Kuykendall, public affairs specialist for the Peace Corps, said she believes President Obama’s call to service, the desire to serve others and the promise of connections with graduate school programs have been greater motivations than the current economic situation.
“These motivations aren’t subject to the ups and downs of the job market,” she added.
Kuykendall also said statistics taken from the days around President Obama’s inauguration in January 2009 show a 175-percent increase in individuals who have started the application process from the same time in 2008.
“His encouragement really drove a lot of people to check out our Web site and learn more,” she said.
Jesse Melgares, recruitment director for Teach for America, also said that though he believes the economy influenced the 34- to 35-percent increase in applications in 2009, the economic situation is not the principal reason for interest in service programs.
“Students can make a direct impact in the civil rights issue of our time,” he said. “At the same time, they can learn skills and build a network that can help them to get a position of influence (after the program).”
Kim Sanders, a fourth-year global studies student headed to Benin through the Peace Corps, said she has always possessed a desire to join the Peace Corps after graduation.
But she said that President Obama’s support of the program through the 10-percent increase in funding only augmented her satisfaction in her decision.
“I’m more proud to go to another country representing the U.S. because we now have a renewed dedication to development,” Sanders said.
However, Cain said that because of the discouraging economic state and the prominent spirit of service of current graduates, there will be an increased demand for competition in service programs.
He added that he believes the Obama administration could have proposed more drastic changes to the community service sector to accommodate these changes.
“I think they could have done a much more ambitious program that would have swept up hundreds of thousands of new graduates as part of the economic stimulus package,” Cain said. “It would have been a good way for people to get job-related skills and wait for the economy to grow back again.”