Student volunteering in English higher education

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Student volunteering in English highereducationClare Holdsworth a & Jocey Quinn ba Department of Geography, Roxby Building, University ofLiverpool, Liverpool, L69 7ZT, UKb Institute for Policy Studies in Education, London MetropolitanUniversity, 166–220 Holloway Road, London, N7 8DB, UKVersion of record first published: 29 Jan 2010.

To cite this article: Clare Holdsworth & Jocey Quinn (2010): Student volunteering in English highereducation, Studies in Higher Education, 35:1, 113-127

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Studies in Higher EducationVol. 35, No. 1, February 2010, 113–127

ISSN 0307-5079 print/ISSN 1470-174X online© 2010 Society for Research into Higher EducationDOI: 10.1080/03075070903019856http://www.informaworld.com

Student volunteering in English higher education

Clare Holdswortha* and Jocey Quinnb

aDepartment of Geography, Roxby Building, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 7ZT, UK; bInstitute for Policy Studies in Education, London Metropolitan University, 166–220 Holloway Road, London N7 8DB, UKTaylor and FrancisCSHE_A_402158.sgm10.1080/03075070903019856Studies in Higher Education0307-5079 (print)/1470-174X (online)Original Article2009Taylor & [email protected]

Volunteering in English higher education has come under political scrutinyrecently, with strong cross-party support for schemes to promote undergraduatevolunteering in particular. Recent targeted initiatives and proposals have sought tostrengthen both the role of volunteering in higher education and synergies betweenhigher education and voluntary sectors. There is, therefore, an emerging consensusamong both politicians and academics that promoting student volunteering isbeneficial for students, higher education institutions and the communities in whichthey volunteer. This article reviews the rationale of recent initiatives to promotevolunteering and the empirical evidence of the impacts that volunteering has onstudents, higher education institutions and communities. It argues that the benefitsof student volunteering are assumed rather than proven, and, in the light of currentpolitical conviction of the need to promote volunteering, it is essential that weconsider, critically, the motivations behind this agenda.

Keywords: student volunteering; community engagement; third sector; wideningparticipation; student identities

Student volunteering has caught the imagination of policy makers and higher educa-tion practitioners in recent years and is moving into the mainstream of English highereducation provision. Indicators of this trend include the government’s policy reviewpaper on public services (Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit 2007), which suggested thatuniversities could formally credit students for voluntary activities. Proposals forremission of tuition fees for student volunteers have also been discussed for Englishand Welsh students (HERO 2007). These proposals follow on from funding from theHigher Education Active Community Fund (HEACF), in 2002–04 and 2004–06 (£37million in total), to extend opportunities for volunteering for both staff and studentsthroughout the higher education sector.

Recent initiatives on student volunteering reflect a wider cross-party political focuson the role of the voluntary sector itself. The government has launched a major reviewof the future role of the third (or non-profit) sector in social and economic regeneration(HM Treasury 2006), while the Conservative Party’s Breakthrough Britain report callsfor future delivery of social services by the voluntary sector (Social Justice PolicyGroup 2007). Concern about an apparent decline in young people’s volunteering hasfocused attention on this sector (Gaskin 2004), and the role of young people has beenexplicitly addressed in the publication of both the Russell Commission’s (2005)proposals for a national framework for youth action and engagement, and the Youth

*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

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114 C. Holdsworth and J. Quinn

Matters Green Paper (Department for Education and Skills 2005) and subsequentgovernment response (Department for Education and Skills 2006), which includesproposals for empowering young people to participate in their local communities.

There are, therefore, clear synergies between current proposals on studentvolunteering in higher education and wider initiatives for the voluntary sector, andyoung people’s contribution in particular. Contemporary accounts of the voluntarysector identify its expansion in terms of size and impact as key characteristics (Kendall2003). Yet, as May, Cloke, and Johnsen (2005) argue, this expansion has been broughtabout by a shifting of the burden of welfare provision from the state to non-statutoryagencies and individual citizens. Student volunteering, while making a relatively smallcontribution to the voluntary sector, in terms of the number of participants and scope,encapsulates and illustrates key social debates about the future of welfare and individualrelationships to and expectations of the state. On the one hand, fostering volunteeringis about encouraging students to become involved and reinforcing an ideal of self-responsibility and self-reliance. On the other, volunteering can also be seen as a formof moral engagement, through which young people engender a sense of duty and respon-sibility for others. Moreover, an important element of student volunteering is how itrelates to students’ employability on leaving university. Students are increasingly beingexhorted to ‘live life to the full’, including making a ‘contribution to society’ (Depart-ment for Education and Skills 2003), and the benefits in terms of future job opportunitiesof making the most of being at university are clearly recognised.

In this article we seek to review current provision for student volunteering, its rolewithin higher education and its assumed benefits. We argue that relatively little hasbeen documented on student voluntary work, despite the political rhetoric in supportof these activities, and that evidence of the outcomes of student volunteering ispiecemeal and fragmented, reflecting the status of student volunteering within highereducation institutions.

Methodology

This article draws on a gap analysis of higher education community engagementwhich was carried out in summer 2006 as part of Phase I of the Economic andSocial Research Council (ESRC) research programme on the impact of highereducation institutions on regional economies. The gap analysis involved primarilydesk-based research, in conjunction with consultation with stakeholders, to identifygaps in current practice and interpretation of higher education community engage-ment. It was carried out in two phases. In phase one two regional networks of highereducation practitioners, academics, policy makers and community representativeswere established in the North-West and South-West of England. The regions werechosen as they incorporate different challenges to higher education communityengagement, and have distinct historical contexts for current activities. Highereducation institutions in the North-West have played a lead role in communityengagement, reflecting their particular location in disadvantaged urban areas, whilehigher education institutions in the South West have to respond to the challenges ofprovision of services in rural settings. Network members were invited to attend tworesearch jury days, a participative approach which brings diverse stakeholderstogether to focus on a key issue and to present and discuss their evidence on thisissue to a jury of researchers (see Quinn [2004] for more details on the methodologyof jury days).

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Studies in Higher Education 115

A range of presenters were asked to present their responses to three questions:

(1) What strategies do you/your project/institution use to engage with localcommunities? What are the barriers to successful engagement, what works andwhat does not, and how important is it to ‘demystify’ higher education?

(2) How responsive are higher education institutions in listening to the needs andviews of local communities?

(3) Who benefits from community engagement? What are the impacts on partici-pants (such as volunteers, members of local communities, higher educationstaff) and how can we evaluate and/or interpret these?

Presentations were followed by questions and discussions from the broader group.Data from the events was then analysed by the researchers and used to build a nuancedand contextualised picture of activities and issues in each local area, which theninformed the future progress of the research.

Following the jury days, phase two of the gap analysis involved a desk-based pieceof research on higher education community engagement, in conjunction with informalinterviews (mainly by telephone) with a small number of practitioners, to enhance thefindings from the jury days. While the gap analysis considered various strategies todevelop higher education community engagement, student volunteering emerged asan essential part of these activities. In some instances, student volunteering becamesynonymous with community engagement. In this article we focus our attention onstudent volunteering as a case study of community engagement activities. It is not ourintention to suggest that volunteering is the only or main way in which highereducation staff and students engage with local communities, but the privilegedposition held by student volunteering and its strong endorsement by policy makersmake it an extremely interesting and topical issue to explore.

The gap analysis of volunteering focused on three main issues: the provision ofsupport for volunteering within higher education institutions, what we know aboutwho volunteers and their motivations for volunteering, and the benefits associatedwith student volunteering. For the latter we considered the theoretical and empiricalbasis of claims made for volunteering. Our review of student volunteering followsthese three themes: organisational support, who volunteers and why, and the benefitsof volunteering.

Review of student volunteering

Organisational support

As discussed above, provision to support student volunteering has been extended inrecent years in higher education, and has been particularly facilitated by the HigherEducation Active Community Fund (Yarwood 2005). Participants in the jury daysgave numerous examples of the diversity of support for student and young peoplevolunteering, and the different opportunities for students to volunteer. However, whileHEACF has obviously been instrumental in supporting projects which facilitatestudent volunteering, it is important to recognise that student volunteering activitiespre-date it. Student community action has been active on many campuses since the1960s, which in turn were pre-dated by University Settlements, established inthe nineteenth and twentieth centuries as missions for the urban poor (Wyatt 2000).

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Motivations for the development of student community action in the 1960s and 1970swere closely linked to political activism, rather than the more evangelical ethos of thenineteenth-century missions. What is distinctive about more recent initiatives, fundedthrough HEACF, is that they are organised and supported within universities, ratherthan by students under the auspices of student unions. For example, in some institu-tions HEACF funding has been used to establish a volunteering bureau service, whichmatches volunteers with projects. HEACF-funded projects have also encouraged theprovision of formal training and monitoring of volunteering activities.

The extension of more formal provision for student volunteering reflects theprofessionalisation of the voluntary sector (Cloke, Johnsen, and May 2006), andincorporates the findings of the Russell Commission, that the main barriers to youngpeople’s involvement in volunteering is awareness of and securing access to projects.HEACF funding has clearly made it ‘easier’ for students to find out and sign up forvolunteering activities. Moreover, practitioners at the jury days working with theseprojects suggested that the different routes to volunteering appeal to different kinds ofstudents. Students seeking work experience are more likely to use the volunteerbureau, while students motivated by more political or community aspirations are morelikely to get involved with student community action. It is important, therefore, torecognise the plurality of current provision for student volunteering, which canpotentially meet the needs of different groups, both in terms of students, voluntaryorganisations and community groups.

Yet, despite the extension of support services for volunteering activities, practitio-ners identified that these activities were often marginalised and dependent on projectfunding, rather than part of mainstream university activities. One way of squaring thiscircle is through extension of service learning (i.e. to integrate community engage-ment with the teaching and research roles of universities: see, for example, Shah andTreby 2006; Stoecker 2002). Service learning is clearly associated with the provisionof volunteering activities, with the aim of formalising these activities within thecurriculum and providing a form of accreditation in order to enhance students’ learn-ing. Again, the recent proposals to encourage universities to give credit for studentvolunteering is not particularly new, as service learning modules have been extendedacross the curricula over the last 20 years (Goodlad 1982). Yet, as with student volun-teering, while service learning is established in UK universities, practitioners felt thatit tended to be provided on a piecemeal basis, concentrated in certain departments andwith particular staff. There is a small, but growing, literature on case studies of servicelearning in English and Irish higher education, though clearly these are a long wayfrom being integrated into mainstream activities; the overall impression is therefore offragmented activity (Bednarz et al. 2008; Buckingham-Hatfield 1995; Butler 2005;Eley 2003; Shah and Treby 2006; Waddington 2001).

It is useful to compare the English experience with North America, where commu-nity service is far more integrated into higher education activities (Boyer 1990; Brin-gle and Hatcher 2000; Butin 2005; Furco 2002; Maurrasse 2001; Mohan 1994a).There is a greater provision within universities to support these activities, and nation-ally community engagement and service is promoted by Campus Compact, anumbrella organisation of over 1000 institutions, whose members incorporate thediversity of higher education institutions in the USA. However, this does not meanthat provision for student volunteering and community engagement is straightforwardin the USA; there is considerable debate about the rationale for community engage-ment and service learning, and the need to strengthen and extend current activities

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(Boyer 1990; Brukardt et al. 2004; Edwards, Mooney, and Heald 2001; Marullo andEdwards 2000; Mohan 1994a, b). The Wingspread report of 2004, which sought tostrengthen the institutionalisation of civic engagement in US higher education institu-tions, declared that ‘engagement has not become the defining characteristic of highereducation’s mission nor has it been embraced across disciplines, departments andinstitutions’ (Brukardt et al. 2004, ii). Ongoing collaborative research, building on ourgap analysis, and involving Australia, Columbia, Kenya, South Africa, the UK andUSA (Sandmann, Quinn, and Moore 2008; Moore, Sandmann, and Quinn 2008), hasrevealed that, whilst local contexts may differ in the emphasis given to communityengagement, it remains a vital and contested concept in higher education across theglobe.

Who volunteers?

Review of the current provision of student volunteering activities in England illus-trates that it is fragmented and diverse, and, as such, volunteering remains a minorityactivity on English higher education campuses. However, one of the major gaps in ourcurrent understanding of volunteering activities is reliable information on the numberand characteristics of students who take part. The assumption, which has influencedrecent initiatives, is that there is plenty of room for expansion, and more could be doneto encourage students from diverse backgrounds to volunteer. Discourses on youthvolunteering in general have raised concerns about young people’s apparent apathytowards volunteering (see, for example, Pirie and Worcester 2000), though recentempirical survey and qualitative data on young people’s involvement reveal a morecomplex situation, and the Home Office Citizenship Survey puts young people’sparticipation quite high (Gaskin 2004; Kitchen et al. 2006).

In 2003 Student Volunteering England’s national survey estimated that there were42,000 student volunteers active in programmes organised at or by their student unionor university (Student Volunteering England 2004). However, other than this estimate(which also appears to be quite low, representing just 2% of all English higher educa-tion students in 2003), there is no other systematic review of volunteering, particularlythe extent to which student volunteers are recruited across the higher education sector.

An alternative source of regional data that we have used to explore uptake andcharacteristics of student volunteers is a survey of students carried out in 2002 as partof an ESRC-funded project on students living at home. The Student ExperiencesSurvey was an online survey of students at four universities in Merseyside. It gener-ated 3282 valid respondents from full-time, UK national students, which represents10% of the eligible students in the four institutions surveyed. The results from thissurvey indicated that 15% of students in all four universities were involved in volun-tary work; 7% do voluntary work organised through their university; and 11% dovoluntary work which is not organised through their university.

This survey data can also be used to scrutinise the characteristics of student volun-teers, and in particular we have used the data to test the assumption of a middle-classbias among student volunteers. The youth voluntary sector recruits more whitemiddle-class young people, particularly in formal activities (Gaskin 2004), and wemight expect to find a similar bias among student volunteers, because of the time andfinancial pressures faced by working-class students. There is some empirical supportfor this assumption. Egerton’s (2002) analysis of the British Household Panel surveyreports a bias among students from professional but not managerial backgrounds.

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However, analysis of the Merseyside student data did not reveal the anticipated bias.Selected characteristics of volunteers and non-volunteers are given in Table 1. Alogistic regression model was also run predicting the odds of being a volunteer, theresults of which are given in Table 2.

Students who volunteer are more likely than non-volunteers to study life sciences,have a caring role, live at home, travel more than 30 minutes to university each day,study at a post-1992 university and work during termtime. The small differential byfather’s occupation was not found to be significant in the logistic regression model,though the differential by parents’ education was. However, overall the characteristicsof student volunteers reflect those of ‘non-traditional’ students rather than ‘traditional’middle-class entrants into higher education. The finding for employment during term-time may appear counter-intuitive, particularly as one of the main reasons given forstudents’ non-participation is that they have to seek paid employment and do not havethe time to volunteer. Moreover, a justification for the payment of fees in lieu ofvolunteering is that it is one way of alleviating the assumed disparity between studentswho have to work in order to support themselves and those who do not. For theseMerseyside students, at least, paid work does not appear to be a barrier to volunteer-ing. Rather, this finding suggests that the barrier is not between paid and voluntarywork, but between those who participate in non-academic activities in order to gainexperience as well as financial benefits, and those who do not.

Why volunteer?

Commentaries on volunteering have identified important shifts in motivations,distinguishing between conventional forms of altruistic or collective modes andemerging reflexive volunteering, which focuses more on individualised needs andexperiences (Hustinx and Lammertyn 2003). Explanations for this shift have drawn ontheories of late modernity (Beck 1992; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2002; Giddens1991) that propose the emergence of self-reflexive biographies, which, while reflect-ing increasing individual freedom of choice, also recognise how individuals have tonegotiate risky and uncertain situations and futures. Yet, as we have alreadysuggested, the popular concern about young people’s civic engagement is not justabout shifts in their motivations for volunteering, but that young people are not

Table 1. Selected characteristics of student volunteers and non-volunteers (%).

% of students Volunteers Non-volunteers

Aged 22 and over 22 18Have a caring role 4 2Travel more than 30 minutes to university 35 28Study sciences excluding life sciences 16 22Study arts, humanities or social sciences 48 44Termtime paid employment 51 43Study at post-1992 institution 50 43Father has professional/managerial occupation 43 40Live away from home 73 78Both parents went to university 27 25

Source: Student Experiences Survey 2002/3.

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interested in taking part at all (Pirie and Worcester 2000). In seeking to address thisassumed apathy, promotional literature on student volunteering, such as StudentVolunteering England’s Crazy Paving resource, incorporates a pluralism of motivesyet is clearly directed towards emphasising the benefits to students, particularly interms of acquiring skills, making friends as well as contributing to local communities:

Volunteering has always been about helping other people. But do you realise how muchit could help you? As a volunteer you can make a difference in your local community.And now people are starting to realise the huge difference their volunteering experiencecan make to their own lives. Volunteering can give direction and focus to your career. It

Table 2. Logistic regression for being a student volunteer.

Variable Log odds ratio

Gender: MaleFemale 0.115

Age: 22 and underAge 22 and over 0.219

Caring: No caring roleHave a caring role 1.153*

Travel to uni: Less than 10 mins10–29 mins 0.314More than 30 mins 0.398*

Degree subject: sciences excluding life sciencesLife sciences 0.388*Study Arts/Humanities/Social Science 0.255Other subject area 0.377*

Termtime paid employment: No employmentHas termtime employment 0.496*

Institution: Pre-1992 institutionPost-1992 institution 0.343*

Father Occupation: Professional/managerialOther occupation −0.042Not working −0.118

Residence: Live away from homeLive at home 0.390*

Parents at uni: both parents at universityAt least one parent at university −0.357*No parent at university −0.246

Model: Log odds ratio of being a volunteer. Reference categories are in italic.Log odds ratio above 0 indicate that students in that category are more likely to record volunteer activity than students in the reference category. Log odds ratio below 0 indicate that students in that category are less likely to record volunteer activity than students in the reference category.*Significant at 90% level in logistic regression analysis with all variables entered.Source: Student Experiences Survey 2002/3.

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can help you to bridge the gap between education and the world of work. And above allit can help you get a job. (Student Volunteering England n.d., 4)

The close identification between participation and future employability is not just afeature of volunteering, but reflects the growing emphasis on ‘economies of experi-ence’ in a global, knowledge-based economy, where qualifications are no longer suffi-cient to confer advantage in the labour market, and competition for graduate jobs ismediated by how effectively cultural capital can be translated into personal capital(Heath 2007). As Brown, Hesketh, and Williams (2003) suggest, the promotion ofpersonal capital is integral to the reproduction of inequalities, not just for educationalexperiences and outcomes, but in how young people are able to benefit from highereducation participation in terms of their ‘employability’.

Instrumental motives for student volunteering are, therefore, emerging as adominant discourse. Students are becoming more aware of the need to expand theircurriculum vitae and build up their personal capital. For young people the negotia-tion of risks and emphasis on individual responsibilities is potentially creating a newcohort of volunteers who are motivated by anticipated future benefits, not to thecommunities with which they volunteer, but to their own career prospects. Thiscontrasts with recent empirical studies, such as Cloke, Johnsen, and May’s (2006,11) ethnography of volunteering in the homeless sector. This describes the complex-ity of volunteers’ motivations that combine giving and receiving, and how volun-teering has the potential to become ‘unreflexively habitual’, whereby volunteers’commitment is not sustained by individual evaluation of benefits of engagement, butthrough commitment to a cause or group of people. Similarly Lewis (1999, 267)argues that the main distinguishing characteristic of volunteers is that of commit-ment to the ‘stigmatized and disadvantaged’.

Theorising motives for students’ engagement does need to reflect the liminalnature of young people’s lives (Holdsworth and Morgan 2005), and, as such, thefocus on anticipated benefits is appropriate. Yet the emphasis on fun and skill-acquisition underplays young people’s commitment to the communities with whomthey volunteer, as well as trivialising the social inequalities and disadvantages thatthey encounter. It is also unclear how engagement in this form synergises withpromoting young people’s understanding of citizenship, and other forms of involve-ment, such as political advocacy or civic participation. Similar concerns have beenraised in the USA, where recent scholarship has focused on promoting institutionalpractices to engage with young people, while recognising that mandatory or pres-surised involvement has the potential to normalise students to social inequalities,rather than stimulating political engagement and debate (Mohan 1994a, b; Marulloand Edwards 2000). Heginbotham claimed almost 20 years ago, for the UK, thatsending in ‘army of young people to make good the damage, will neither encouragelong-term voluntary activity nor enhance the ability of communities to be interde-pendent’ (1990, 34).

A further constituent of young people’s volunteering is how it relates to identitiesand ideals of adulthood. Volunteering for young people is often linked to rather vaguenotions of personal development; for example, the University of Central LancashireCentre for Volunteering and Community Action states that it promotes volunteeringin order to ‘enable young people to find and fulfil their true potential’ (Melling n.d.).Thus volunteering is promoted as a transitional activity which enables the student tobecome a better adult, both for their own good and for the good of society.

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The ideal of betterment through volunteering again contrasts with the social reali-ties of the communities with whom students participate. The potential of exploitationfor personal ‘development’ has been muted in recent media discourses about youngpeople volunteering abroad, and similar arguments apply to more local engagement.However, an alternative approach to examining the relationship between volunteeringand adult identities is that volunteering has the potential to unsettle assumed func-tional links between independence and adulthood (Holdsworth and Morgan 2005).Rather than stimulating an individualised model of adulthood, based on economicindependence and ‘looking after number one’, young people who volunteer, eitherformally or informally, may identify with a sense of self that is nurtured throughresponsibilities for and interconnectivities with others (see, for example, Griffiths1995; Holdsworth 2007). Volunteering clearly has the potential to foster a form ofmoral engagement which recognises the need to take responsibility for others, ratherthan the hegemonic model of independence for young people, which emphasisesseparation and distance.

Benefits of volunteering

While promotional literature for student volunteering identifies individualised bene-fits, recent initiatives on volunteering in higher education have sought to establish acommunitarian ethos to participation, as the HEACF website states:

volunteering helps to promote a fairer, more cohesive society in which individuals feelthey have a stake. It also helps to build bridges between communities and local organi-zations such as higher education institutions. (Higher Education Funding Council forEngland 2005)

Communities are commonly defined as those who share a locality or geographicalplace, and those who share communities of interest. Student volunteering engageswith communities in both these respects, for example, working with local people inareas close to their university, or working with those brought together by a commonconcern, such as groups of people with disabilities. For universities, volunteering is akey constituent of community engagement initiatives (e.g. University of Cambridge2004). Moreover, recent debates about the processes of studentification have alsoidentified the role of volunteering in bridging the gap between different social, butgeographically co-existing, communities of local residents and students (Smith andDenholm 2006). If we combine this communitarian perspective with that of the antic-ipated benefits to students, then volunteering is win/win; everyone benefits. Highereducation staff who took part in the network activities argued that this was indeed thecase. For example, a recent initiative in one university to sponsor litter picks in studentneighbourhoods was identified as having benefits all round: the students enjoyedtaking part and the ‘local’ residents appreciated their efforts, and as such the activitywas recognised as improving relations between locals and students.

However, we argue that the assumption of win/win is too simplistic, and does notnecessarily hold up to close inspection. Recent critiques of students engaged in volun-tary work during gap years have queried whether the expected benefits to hostcommunities are realised, and similar arguments have been applied to volunteering atuniversity (Edwards, Mooney, and Heald 2001; Heath 2007; Simpson 2004). We alsoneed to consider if student volunteers may in some instances replace other people’spaid work, for example, through helping out as classroom assistants. Moreover, the

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emphasis on bridging the gap between locals and students assumes that the twocommunities are mutually exclusive, and underplays the possibility for student volun-teers to be locals contributing to their own communities, as suggested by the Mersey-side data (Holdsworth 2006). The dominant discourses of student volunteering givelittle agency to local communities, which are positioned as the beneficiaries ofparticipation. Yet this one-way relationship has been challenged in other aspects ofhigher education community engagement, where the principle of mutual learning isacknowledged (Fitzgerald and Peterson 2005). In the literature from the USA the‘binary between “privileged server” and “underprivileged recipient”’ (Henry 2005,45) is increasingly questioned. While many assumptions are made for the communi-tarian outcomes of student volunteering, we know very little about the dynamics ofrelationships between different communities and the synergies that exist, or have thepotential to exist.

From a theoretical perspective it is necessary to consider the extent to whichcommunitarian and individualised benefits of volunteering are compatible, and if theclaim for volunteering being win/win holds up to closer inspection. Theoreticallythere clearly is a tension between communitarian politics and liberal individualisation(Frazer 1999), and the assumption of win/win appears somewhat naïve from thisregard. The crux of the problem is whether we can assume that volunteerism will auto-matically benefit individuals and give students advantage over others, and at the sametime contribute to community cohesion. This assumption clearly ignores some of themain critiques of communitarian politics, particularly the problem of how to defineand recognise communities. Frazer argues that community ‘can only be realized andlived in episodic and fleeting moments’ (1999, 84), and as such she is sceptical aboutthe potential of communitarian politics to be able to develop a greater sense of unity.Take the example of a student litter pick; while this may well be popular with studentsand local residents, the ‘sense of community’ that is developed is certainly likely tobe temporary, particularly as the student community itself is constantly changing.

A second key facet of communitarian politics is, as Sennett argues, that it ‘falselyemphasizes unity as the source of strength in a community’ (1998, 143). It is problem-atic to reconcile this emphasis on unity with the expectation that students are able touse their experiences of volunteering to generate social and personal capital, whichwill ultimately afford advantage in the labour market. While aspirations for personaldevelopment are not ignored in the rhetoric of communitarian ideology, the expecta-tion is that a commitment to community values is essential for the formation of self-identity and personal well-being (Dixon, Dogan, and Sanderson 2005), and that thiswill reduce conflict and competition. However, as Brown, Hesketh, and Williams(2003) succinctly argue in the context of the graduate labour market, the accumulationof personal capital is instrumental in the reproduction of inequalities:

As more and more contestants enter the labour market with graduate qualifications thevalue of credentials as a screening device declines. Therefore, personal qualities areemphasised in an attempt to legitimate the reproduction of inequalities, rather thanimprove productivity. (115)

Part of the problem in evaluating the claims made for student volunteering is thatthere is little evidence to substantiate benefits for either local communities or students.Communitarian benefits from development activities are often assumed, but verydifficult to identify (Dinham 2005; Mowbray 2005). A criticism endorsed bynetwork participants was that higher education community engagement, including

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volunteering, is not critically appraised, with the assumption that it is a good thing todo, as long as it is done right. Yet, as John (2006, 51) argues:

Community development is not an inherently benevolent practice. We need to constantlycritique our practice. The danger for inequality and injustice to be reinforced and some-times introduced through community development activity is always present.

A similar critique was made by Hardy (1996) 10 years earlier, but, despite the recog-nition that it is potentially damaging to assume automatic benefits from communityengagement, the assumption of mutual good prevails.

Existing evaluation tools, even those directed towards measuring communityimpacts, are reliant on specific measures that are often, though not exclusively, easierto measure at the level of the individual (e.g. human, social, economic, cultural andphysical capital: see Institute for Volunteering Research 2004). Evaluations of studentvolunteering do report positive impacts on communities, but these are generallycollected from organisations, rather than involving the communities involved(Edwards, Mooney, and Heald 2001). Evaluations certainly have a role to play, andprovide excellent case studies of specific examples of impacts on students and theorganisation for which they work (for example, Burke 2006; Melling n.d.), yet areclearly limited in respect of understanding wider impacts.

Turning to the impact on students, the main drawback here is the lack of controlgroups in evaluations (though some US evaluations of service learning do includecontrol groups: see Bringle and Hatcher 1996). For example, if we focus on the rela-tionship between employability and volunteering, arguably the most objectivemeasure of all possible impacts, the relationship is not proven. While there are subjec-tive data on how students feel they have benefited from volunteering (Burke 2006),and in many cases students do get jobs through volunteering (e.g. youth and conser-vation work), the absence of a control group means that statistically the case foremployability is not proven. One longitudinal survey of volunteering that could berelevant here is the Department for Education and Skills longitudinal study of unem-ployment and volunteering, which included a control group (Hirst n.d.) This surveyfound subjective data on the impacts of volunteering (that is, volunteers thought thatthey gained from their volunteering and it helped them to find a job), though this wasnot substantiated by the statistical model. We need, therefore, to consider if this couldthis be the same for students. Indeed, it is likely that the relationship between volun-teering and employability is complex, reflecting the different ways in which studentsget involved and their motivations for doing so. Students who volunteer in order togain relevant work experience may well benefit from increased employability, yetthose who are motivated for other reasons, such as political activism, may notnecessarily seek to capitalise from participation in this way.

Conclusion

In the UK, recent initiatives to promote student volunteering have been broadlywelcomed and have important synergies with current political engagement with thevoluntary sector. This recognition of student volunteering is neither specific to the UK,nor is it necessarily a passing trend. In particular, the attitude of higher education insti-tutions, as well as politicians, towards student volunteering has clearly been influencedby the US experience. One important aspect of the recent discourses and initiatives on

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student volunteering is that it is taken to be self-evidently a ‘good thing’, and thatpromoting student civic engagement will have positive repercussions for students,local communities and universities. To criticise student volunteering could be taken asa rather uncharitable thing to do, as surely it is better that students volunteer than donothing? However, as we have sought to explore in this article, while we do not intendto criticise the intentions of student volunteers, or schemes set up to facilitate volun-teering, we have sought to unsettle some of the taken-for-granted assumptions aboutvolunteering. As volunteering becomes more mainstream within higher education, notjust in the UK but elsewhere, a critical perspective is necessary to ensure that it neithernormalises students to social inequalities, nor perpetuates social injustice.

Clearly the impact that student volunteering will have on disadvantaged commu-nities is muted. Though this does not mean that students do not have a contribution tomake, we need to be cautious about some of the ambitious claims that are made forvolunteering. Moreover, we need to recognise the plurality of different ways in whichstudents get involved in communities. In particular, many young people are politicallyactive, not necessarily in mainstream politics, but in taking part in direct action, forexample, campaigning against globalisation or climate change. Furthermore, thediversity of the student population is related to this diversity in engagement: forexample, students who do not move away from home are more likely to be involvedin their local communities, and their participation does not necessarily come under theauspices of student volunteering.

Our aim in this article, therefore, has been to scrutinise what we know aboutstudent volunteering and to compare this evidence against the claims that are made forit. Clearly, there is a knowledge gap in what we know about both the characteristicsof volunteers and their outcomes. While there are a number of case studies of specificprojects and institutions, the fragmented nature of the material reflects the status ofvolunteering in universities. We call for an open and critical debate about the role ofstudent volunteering. How do we recognise diversity in terms of students’ motivationsand form of engagement, while at the same time seek to integrate these activities intomainstream higher education institution activities? Can student volunteering incorpo-rate diverse moral agendas: will it foster individual self-reliance or a greater capacityfor recognising and responding to the needs of others? Finally, will the individualisedbenefits of participation outweigh the potential contributions to communities, eitherwithin or outside of higher education institutions, and do these communitarianaspirations have any validity?

AcknowledgementsWe would like to thank participants in the jury days for their contribution to the gap analysisand the anonymous referees for their comments and suggestions. This research was funded byESRC grant RES-171-25-0005.

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Student volunteering in English higher education