Washington Monthly - September/October 2021 - 24

dents they tutor, compared to control groups. The workforce
training nonprofit Year Up, staffed by AmeriCorps members,
increases the earnings of the young adults from low-income
and disadvantaged backgrounds who receive the training by
$7,000 to $8,000 per year compared to similar young people
who don't participate. The Big Brothers Big Sisters program,
also heavily staffed by AmeriCorps members, cut the rate at
which young minority participants initiate drug use by 70
percent compared to similar young adults. Low-income high
school students who are counseled by College Advising Corps
members (like those in the program Matt Hudson-Flege runs)
are 18 percent more likely to apply to a college or university
and 19 percent more likely to be accepted than are similar students
who aren't counseled.
The evaluative literature on the effect of AmeriCorps on
members themselves is not as extensive. But a 2018 study by
the nonprofit group Service Year Alliance and Burning Glass
Encouraging students to
give something to help
make America better isn't,
or shouldn't be, incidental
to how we judge the value
of our public investments
in higher education. It
should be central to it.
Technologies, a labor market analytics firm, suggests the
impact is substantial. The study compared the resumes of
70,000 veterans of AmeriCorps and other service programs,
like the Peace Corps, to 100,000 otherwise similar peer resumes.
It found that 24 percent of the program veterans who
didn't have a bachelor's degree when they served went on, like
Hudson-Flege, to earn one, compared to 11 percent of the peer
group. It also found that after 10 years, 23 percent of the vets
had careers in education, and community and social service
occupations-again like Hudson-Flege-compared to 7 percent
of their peers.
Other studies show that serving in AmeriCorps builds
members' skills and personal networks in ways that help them
secure future jobs, especially in the nonprofits they embed in.
Indeed, the program operates as a kind of " de facto workforce
development system " for the nonprofit sector, writes the
longtime national service expert Shirley Sagawa of the Center
for American Progress. This is no small advantage. According
to the Johns Hopkins Nonprofit Employment Project, nonprofits
employ the nation's third-largest private-sector workforce,
behind only retail trade and manufacturing.
24 September/October 2021
D
espite its record of boosting college and career attainment
(for both its members and those they serve), the
idea of greatly expanding AmeriCorps has almost never
been raised during the past few years of intense discussions
among liberals about how to make college free, or at
least far more affordable. Instead, that discussion has largely
centered on three big policy ideas to achieve that goal.
For a long time, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren
dominated the debate with their free college proposals, under
which the federal government would give states enough money
to allow their public two- and four-year colleges and universities
to charge no tuition. But as this magazine has long
argued-and as progressive policy wonks have since come to
understand-the Sanders/Warren plan leads to a nightmare
of unintended consequences. It would unjustly reward those
states (mostly red) that cut college funding and let tuition
rise, while perversely penalizing states (mostly blue) that did
the right thing by spending more to keep tuition low. It would
heavily subsidize elite public research universities that cater
to affluent white people, while short-changing regional universities
and community colleges, which disproportionately
educate non-wealthy students of color and have less money
to begin with. And by excluding private nonprofit colleges,
the Sanders/Warren plan would leave out hundreds of schools
that serve racially and economically diverse students, including
many historically Black institutions.
In part because of these problems, the Biden White
House has emphasized a different idea: free community college.
This approach is politically and morally easier to make
the case for than free four-year college. While almost every
American today needs some kind of quality post-secondary
credential to have a decent shot at a middle-class life, we
aren't yet at the point where every American needs a four-year
degree. Nor does every American want one. And a lot of those
who don't voted for Donald Trump.
That said, bachelor's degrees do confer much greater
lifetime earnings on average than do sub-baccalaureate credentials,
and they are disproportionately earned by middleand
upper-income whites. So there remains a profound need
to do something to address the inequities of the four-year
college system.
Fortunately, there is growing consensus among Democrats
in Washington, including Biden himself, to support
a third big idea that will help on that front: doubling the
size of the Pell Grant. In 1975, the Pell covered 80 percent
of the cost of a public four-year degree. Now it covers only
30 percent. Doubling the award, from the current maximum
of $6,495 to $12,990 per year, would make college more affordable
for millions of students. It would also largely avoid
the pitfalls of the Sanders/Warren plan because the grants
would be targeted at the lower- and lower-middle-income
students who need them the most.
It would not be a panacea, however, for several reasons.
First, without tough federal regulation, states will be tempted
to cut their education budgets by the amount of the in
Washington Monthly - September/October 2021

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