Critiquing Transactional Altruism and the Erosion of Genuine Community Service among Youth

When the unstoppable force of students rushing towards post-secondary greatness meets the immovable object of university admissions standards, what’s to happen? The high-pressure nature of modern university admissions has put an emphasis on secondary school students’ involvement in community service. As a consequence, for many nowadays the motivations behind service are based on extrinsic demand rather than an intrinsic passion to help and contribute to something greater than oneself. This shift in mindset, coupled with the increasing competitiveness of university admissions, has amalgamated into a degradation of genuine social responsibility. To understand this erosion, one must look past the individual student and into the systemic pressures that have redefined the purpose of civic engagement. Only from expanding altruism beyond the reward system of university admissions can we as a society return to a more grounded sense of civic responsibility.

Being “good” is a subjective idea: cultures and religions from around the world have different criteria for what makes a person “good”. But who has the real power to define “goodness”? For secondary school students it’s universities. For most they are the gatekeepers of the next step of their lives, and so they are granted the moral high ground to decide what is “good”. They form criteria that students are inclined to model themselves after to gain validation in the form of acceptance. However, it is important to understand that universities are not creating this effect with ill-intent; they are simply mirrors of a society that has granted them the moral authority to define what success looks like. Nevertheless, when institutions hold a monopoly on defining virtue the identity of a student becomes little more than a product to be traded for admission. Modern admissions systems treat a student’s moral identity as a resource to be harvested and traded for social mobility; it’s advantageous for institutions to host students that have a certain image. Supporting this shift, a study by Resch et al. asserts that from the students’ perspective, social appreciation of their commitment is of primary importance, and that expressions of grateful attitude in relation to their work give meaning to their action (Resch et al., 2021). Their findings suggest that altruism has become inextricably linked with the pursuit of social capital. Thus, the way in which students look at community service has become a reaction to how the universities that they aspire to join value their actions. This transactional mindset, however, contradicts our biological foundation. An empirical investigation conducted by Felix Warneken and Michael Tomasello demonstrates that altruism is a natural human predisposition that emerges as early as fourteen months of age (Warneken & Tomasello, 2006). They studied the capacity for altruistic behaviour within children and chimpanzees, and his study noted that concrete rewards have a detrimental effect, as they undermine a child’s intrinsic altruistic motivation (Warneken & Tomasello, 2006). These behaviours were observed without any expectation of reward, which emphasizes just how “natural” altruism is to humans before external systems interfere with it. Consequently, the source of motivation for a student's involvement in service is no longer intrinsic, but instead a reactive performance tailored to fit certain criteria.

The transition from intrinsic duty to institutional validation is best understood through Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of Symbolic Capital. In his lecture, “Social Space and Symbolic Power”, he shared the idea of Habitus: deeply ingrained habits, skills and dispositions that individuals acquire through their social upbringing guide behaviour and decision-making subconsciously (Bourdieu, 1989). The way in which universities are pedestalized as the universal next step for secondary school students distorts and augments their Habitus, and is a form of social engineering. Though this effect is unintentional, it is still very much an interesting implication when evaluating the nature of civic engagement among youth in the 21st-century. When the Habitus of a person becomes fixated on a return-on-investment for their actions, they lose the value of such actions within themselves and become dependent on the reaction they receive for validation. That shift in psychology also calls into question the true nature of modern volunteership. Students often choose a service project, not necessarily because it is needed by the community, but because it will help them stand out. Ergo, what a student will create is not necessarily for the greater good, but is often oriented to receive a higher exchange rate on the market of the symbolic capital that Bourdieu references.

With that in mind, we must ask ourselves: what happens to these students once they graduate or are no longer being “graded” or “ranked” on their goodness? As Pierre Bourdieu outlines, the social habits that adolescents engage with from a young age provide the foundation for subconscious decision making ability. As a consequence, one must call into question the longevity of student led initiatives. In an article published in the American Journal of Education, the retention rate of student-led initiatives in the US that carried from high school into university was found to be 20-21% (Pencer et al., 2007). So, what happens to the community that relied on that initiative? Clearly, transactional civic engagement isn’t only destructive for the sense of social responsibility within the modern youth, but also for the communities that are being aided. It creates “flash-in-the-pan” solutions that disappear as soon as the founder gets their “recognition.” Moreover, the institutional definition of “goodness” also encourages a saviour complex, where students feel as if they are saving a community rather than serving it. The treatment of communities has created a dangerous asymmetry of power, where communities are reduced to testing grounds for leadership development rather than a partner in genuine social progress. So, when these initiatives collapse, these communities understand that their needs were merely the scaffolding for someone else’s social mobility. Thus, the ‘prestige-seeking’ admissions model instrumentalizes the vulnerability of certain, often marginalized, groups for personal and institutional gain.

Clearly, the status quo of how youths perceive service should be challenged. Solutions should be aimed at reconfiguring the adolescent Habitus, ensuring the next generation of students avoid the same trap. Academic institutions, as the primary architects of the ‘virtue’ archetype, are the ones who should take action towards reconciliation; if they have the power to define what is “good” then they have the power to change that definition. Crucially, these changes must address the Overjustification Effect by de-incentivizing the performance of virtue. But, it is critical to understand that while this essay does present the degradation of altruism as a complex issue, I alone do not hold a definitive answer to fixing it. I believe that the starting point for genuine change lies in the collaboration between school administrations at all levels: from primary schools to universities. It is essential that students view themselves as partners rather than protagonists, and that their initiatives are focused on genuine, long-term impact. Before a student can log a single hour, they should conduct a “Community Landscape” assessment where they identify the stakeholders, the history of the issue, and what the community was doing before the student arrived. This humbles the “hero” narrative that many become obsessed with, and it teaches students that they are not “saving” a community but joining an ongoing effort. Universities should also rethink how they assess their involvement. They should ask themselves: “Are we willing to change the way in which we judge and value certain experiences?” It is imperative that admissions officers look for a partner to empower, rather than a “hero” to applaud.

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