Critical Reading Assignment

            In the article Why Colleges Should Require a Gap Year, Jonathan Zimmerman discusses his perspectives on gap years, and volunteering before starting college after high school graduation. Democratic primary candidate Pete Buttigeg had spoken on requiring high school graduates to participate in national service after graduation. Zimmerman discusses how, while requiring this may not work from a legal and constitutional perspective, it could become a social norm, and that, while the government could not require it, colleges could. The article goes into ways this could be done, benefits colleges could provide students who do elect to do this, and so on.

Zimmerman quotes Buttigeg, where Buttigeg talks about 18-year-olds providing social service and how it should become a social norm. After this quote, Zimmerman says “He’s right,” which is what I believe is his thesis. One of Zimmerman’s main claims is that, since the government cannot require this type of service from people, colleges should require it. He explains ways that colleges could help students with this, and how students who participate in service could get discounted tuition or course credit. Another claim Zimmerman makes is that, having students do service like this may help improve some negative opinions people may have about colleges. These are some of the reasons he believes that Buttigeg is right about a required service year being beneficial.

As this is a publication which is mostly by and for people who work in higher education; Zimmerman uses personal pronouns when referring to colleges, for example “our students,” which is not how someone who is not a professor or teacher would write it. The sentence that stood out to most me was this: “Have you noticed how many people don’t like us?” (Zimmerman). This sentence really stands out as someone who works for a college writing for an audience of others who work in colleges. This stood out to me as I was skimming the article again because I was confused at first until I reread for context; I was not sure who “us” was referring to, and I can tell this is mostly written for an audience of people working in higher education because obviously I do not relate to this sentence – he also provides statistics about peoples’ opinions of college after this sentence.

From my perspective, there are pros and cons of this idea, much like anything else. I think some of the things Zimmerman mentions are great, such as some institutions like Princeton and Duke that already offer financial aid to students that go on gap-year projects; I think anything that can lower some of the high costs of college is a good idea. Zimmerman mentions that this would be good for society, to have more people volunteering and helping to improve society, and the benefits for the students participating as well as the benefits for society. Some of the cons I thought of were that some of this service could be risky due to COVID-19, and, as Zimmerman mentions, some endeavors could be costly if the student or family would have to pay. I do think it makes sense that this could not be required by law because there are certainly many circumstances between family, health, money, etc. that could prevent a person from participating in this type of service.