forest foundation

Allowing College Students to be Students

Part of what we're doing in the Forest Foundation is prove that by giving college students the opportunity to work in leadership roles within their community and paying them a significantly higher amount than minimum wage to do so not only benefits the community, but the students as well. The benefit to the students, however, is more than merely monetary; we believe that this type of work will benefit students in the academic arena as well, allowing them to invest more time and money into their studies than would be otherwise possible. According to Jonathan M. Orszag, Peter R. Orszag, and Diane M. Whitmore in their article Learning and Earning: Working in college, "Since 1984, the fraction of college students...who work full- or part-time has increased from 49 to 57 percent." Furthermore, they report that "working college students earn roughly $7.50 per hour." One benefit of our system, then, is that students earn over 25% higher wages than the average college student. Moreover, the Forest Foundation system puts the student in a position of leadership for the benefit of the community, rather than placing them at the bottom of the corporate totem pole, as it were. As I said, however, the benefits reach far beyond the monetary spectrum. According to the same report, 40% of students report "that work limits their class schedule; 36 percent report it reduces their class choices; 30 percent report it limits the number of classes they take; and 26 percent report it limits access to the library." The Forest Foundation's working system negates these drawbacks. By allowing students the freedom to select the number of hours they work per week and the flexibility to change when and where they work daily, students are completely free to take the classes they need or desire and study whenever and however they want. In effect, the Forest Foundation allows college students to remain students, rather than "workers who study." And this is just the beginning to the advantages we are seeing created from the Forest Foundation's working practice. As time goes on, we expect to find a significant amount of positive effects for the college students we employ in addition to the advantages we see for the community. Truly, time will tell the tale.

posted by forest foundation @ 3:17 PM