UMass Amhearst seems like a profoundly ridiculous school these days. I agree that students should not receive college credit for political campaigning.

But -- and here's where I'll no doubt catch hell -- what's the essential difference between college credit for political campaigning and college credit for marching and drilling?

That is to say: Erin's a huge supporter of ROTC programs. But while there is some true academic content in ROTC, there's a lot of credit-receiving work that is not much different from election volunteering, such as training in military courtesy, basic first aid, field training, and drill and ceremony (to borrow from Wikipedia's list of MSI duties).

So if we're giving college credit for learning how to march in a disciplined fashion, why *not* give credit for pestering undecided voters?

Or, to use a less politically loaded example: why not fight against PE credit as college? Should students have to pay tuition (and receive college credit) for squat thrusts?

I'm happy to purge the academy of all non-academic functions. But for me, that means purging credit for campaigning, for marching, and for swimming.

But surely the objection to this isn't just that the students were given academic credit for an activity that isn't really academic, but that they were in effect being bribed to participate in a partisan political campaign? While we can agree that neither learning basic first aid nor volunteering for the Obama campaign is academic, it doesn't follow (nor is it true) that the two are not much different.

I'm actually quite sympathetic to the idea that colleges shouldn't offer credit for non-academic activities in general (although I don't think that requires purging the academy of all non-academic functions), but one would hardly need to agree with that to see a problem in this case.

Re "purg[ing] the academy of all non-academic functions": hear hear, but good luck. As we all know, colleges are not just, or even primarily, about academics. Colleges are loci of student attention, money, and energy, all of which various commercial and ideological groups try to capture. They are places to find class-appropriate spouses and make valuable social and professional connections. (The latter, of course, is what internships are typically about.) They are often charged with missions such as "preserving and promoting the unique history and culture of a region and stimulating its economic development," as my own school's mission statement puts it. We are charged with no less than helping "our students in achieving their life goals"--as opposed to, say, helping students figure out what might be a worthy life goal. Colleges are also about entertaining the community, which is to say, fielding football and basketball teams.

I'd love to see colleges shed everything but academics. But I'm also aware that, of all the things we do, academics probably has the smallest off-campus constituency. Our sports program is all over the local media (sometimes national media as well), and I've read any number of stories about about our regional economic development initiatives, but I've never seen a headline reading "Student Has Epiphany, Changes Life While Reading Crevecoeur."

"So if we're giving college credit for learning how to march in a disciplined fashion, why *not* give credit for pestering undecided voters?"

If it were a private institution, I wouldn't have a problem with it. I'd think it was stupid, but not unethical and arguably criminal. But Luther, surely even you can recognize that there IS a difference between teaching the objective skills involved in ROTC, and providing taxpayer funds to a partisan political campaign.

Sure, Dave J, if a uni wants to give out credits for "public service," the uni must have a wide ideological spectrum of choices for students.

Given that politics can be a profession, and that most colleges award credit for preprofessional internships, I don't see any inherent problem with interning for a campaign. And I suppose that working for a campaign would help give a poli-sci major a good practical understanding of concepts taught as theory in the classroom. But such internships should 1.) be awarded for work done for any political party, 2.) have at least some academic content (say, a formal paper relating the intern's field experience to their classroom work), and 3.) remain under the control of, and serve the ends of, the academic program rather than being hijacked by a party. The latter seems to be the problem at UMass, where the internships are being driven by the Democratic Party's desire to win rather than the university's desire to educate.

Eveningsun,

I don't think politics counts as a profession as that term is typically understood. For the most part it isn't a career based upon specialist knowledge, there are no formal qualifications, and while there are countless political organizations, there is no professional guild, etc.

But I don't really want to quibble about that. We can agree that if someone were to receive credit for involvement in a political campaign all three of the conditions you suggest would have to be met. It looks to me that in the case we're considering UM-Amherst fails to meet any of the conditions. Furthermore, while I can imagine that in the right hands there's a decent chance that some kind of scheme would meet the first two, in practice it's hard to see how a college could guarantee that condition 3 was met.