A different drummer: a new way to pay for college.

Before I became a freshman at the University of Notre Dame in 1981, I was inundated with mail encouraging me to look into ROTC (Reserve Officers' Training Corps) scholarships to help finance my education. It was not hard for me to turn down such offers. By temperament I had never been attracted to military life. Still, on the practical level, I faced real difficulties, chief of which was how would I ever finance such an expensive education.

Fortunately, my interest in agriculture translated into a summer job in California's Imperial Valley. It not only helped foot the bill for tuition at Notre Dame but propelled my academic interests toward working on hunger issues, particularly in Africa and Latin America. As a result, long before career decision time arrived, I knew where I wanted to focus my efforts. The Peace Corps offered me an opportunity to go to Africa. Instead, I chose a much smaller program with the Holy Cross Associates in Chile.

I mention these autobiographical fragments only to help indicate why I feel it is time for Catholic universities to offer ROTClike scholarships to undergraduates interested in helping to pay for their educations through postgraduation, nonmilitary service opportunities.

The chief problem, of course, is that nonmilitary service is rarely supported with equivalent scholarship funding. Still, the idea of offering scholarships to students willing to undertake community service after graduation--whether internationally through the Peace Corps or domestically through any number ofgovernment- and nongovernment-supported initiatives working with poorer communities--makes sense on a number of levels.

Such a program would respond to one of the primary economic challenges our country faces in this post-cold war era: converting from a military to a civilian economy. The debate over military cut-backs and peace dividends ought to include a re-examination of university life as well. It is no longer necessary to train as many new officers as it was in even the recent past. Troop reductions are already taking place, and the 1990 budget accord itself called for downsizing ROTC scholarships 20 percent by 1995. Last year, in fact, 61 of 413 college ROTC programs were terminated and Army ROTC scholarships were reduced by 47 percent, from 3,000 to 1,600. While immediate reductions in Navy and Air Force programs have not yet been as drastic as Army ROTC cutbacks, the 20 percent reduction by 1995 applies to all ROTC branches of the military services.

Notre Dame has by far the largest ROTC program of any Catholic university in the country. Approximately 10 percent of its undergraduate population participates in the program. A 20 percent reduction would translate into a loss of 150 full scholarships. These students would have to come up with alternative financing--or find less expensive college alternatives. When I was at Notre Dame I knew many individuals in the ROTC program who would have pursued alternatives to ROTC if they had been available. A 1988 survey by Michael Hovey and Gordon Zahn, "ROTC and Catholic Education," reported that twentytwo of twenty-four Catholic institutions responding to the survey indicated that they would be likely to participate in an alternative "peace scholarship" program if it were to become available.

After graduation in 1985 but before leaving for Chile, I wrote to Notre Dame President Theodore Hesburgh to explain why I thought peace scholarships were a sensible idea. He wrote back that such a proposal might go over well with some Peace Corps people he would be seeing, including Loret Miller Ruppe, then head of the agency and later a Notre Dame board member. When I returned from Chile in 1988, I was encouraged to hear Ms. Ruppe broach the idea of a Peace Corps equivalent to ROTC scholarships. She did so at a commencement address at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles; I was left with the impression that the plan was well on its way to being implemented. Three years later, however, nothing further had developed.

So I wrote Father Hesburgh again and asked for an update. He responded that the idea had not fared well in Washington, and that while he still favored the concept, it would take a lot of "pushing" in Washington to get it through. He implied the time was not favorable.

Now things may be different, and it could just be the time to start pushing. For one thing, President-elect Bill Clinton campaigned on a platform that suggested various options for financing college educations. He spoke of both long-term automatic paybacks and two-year stints doing community service. By my calculations, the latter would not come close to paying back the debt incurred in financing most private college educations today. But the suggestion is a starting point for discussion. Second, economic survival warrants that we prepare for the future by moving away from a military-focused economy. Finally, there are great unmet needs among the poor, both at home and abroad. On another level--and here again I would offer a personal reflection on Clinton's two-year service proposal-one of the chief drawbacks I experienced with my two-year commitment as a Holy Cross Associate in Chile was that the time was too short. Indeed, I seemed to have to say goodby just as I had adjusted to the culture and was beginning to make a real contribution. How much better prepared would young students be--and how much more effective--if they were supported generously throughout their undergraduate careers with "peace scholarships" that would be aimed at three- or four-year nonmilitary service opportunities--at home or abroad following graduation.

Financing such a program is a major concern. The federal government has created one precedent at Norwich University in Northfield, Vermont. A small military college, Norwich has developed a leadership program that allows junior and senior cadets to train for entry in the Peace Corps. The government should extend this program to other schools. But the government should not be the only institution to support such grants. Universities themselves should support such options, as should corporations and philanthropies. Notre Dame, for example, might develop a peace scholarship program in connection with its Peace Studies Institute. Such an undertaking might provide a model for other departments and institutions interested in enhancing the concept of community service. Marty Fergus, the director of Fordham University' s peace studies program, agrees that such institutes as Fordham's are a natural place for offering peace scholarships. But for him the impediment remains the lack of available money. The solution, I believe, rests in part with the universities themselves. If they were to shift such service programs/opportunities from the periphery and promote them as a more central component in their general vision of a university education, the money would be more likely to follow. Catholic universities shouldn't have a hard time endorsing such a concept. It would underscore their unique contribution to American higher education, and enhance the system in general.

BILL JORDAN 

Bill Jordan and his wife are preparing for an assignment in Latin America with the Maryknoll Lay Mission Program.