Economics of Service Hours Reflection Porter

Requiring students to have a certain number of service hours to graduate could be a very beneficial experience for the students. Making students get out into the community and interact and help gives them the opportunity to give back to the community. Service hours also provide valuable real world experiences and lessons they can take with them for the rest of their lives. One more possible advantage of requiring service hours could be to introduce the students to a career they might be interested in pursuing in the future(Nadia Khan, chicagotribune.com).

While requiring students to have a certain number of service hours could benefit them, there are also downsides to this policy. Not every single student will embrace this idea of required service hours, and will neglect the possible advantages they can receive from it. Having to keep doing volunteer work over and over and over again could get old, and some students will just do the bare minimum and do whatever work halfheartedly just to fit a quota. It is possible by requiring service hours to graduate, students will lose any actual interest in making a difference(Nadia Khan, chicagotribune.com).

I think that students should not be required to have service hours to graduate. I feel that it is an unnecessary experience for a student to have, and that the student would gain more benefits from volunteer work if they were doing it of their own accord. I agree with the con argument, that forcing students to do it, most of the students would do the absolute bare minimum and take the easiest possible route in serving their hours.