Report issued

"The National Student Association (NSA), a national union of students and student governments representing about 350 colleges and universities, recently issued a report in which it recommended that credit should be offered for off-campus experiences in such things as hospitals, the Peace Corps, the civil rights movement or the anti-poverty programme.

"With this idea in mind, San Francisco State College student government has initiated a Community Involvement Project (CIP) which has offered an opportunity for over 600 students to become involved in off-campus activity.

"Through the project. students have organised tenant unions in housing projects, worked on a community planning project, and provided youth counselling and recreation for children in the city's slum areas. The more than 300 tutors involved in the Tutorial Programme devote four hours a week tutoring culturally deprived youngsters.

"Community involvement is providing the students with opportunities to relate classroom knowledge directly to the outside world and to make the community itself a classroom. They are discovering important roles they can play in society even while students, rather than feeling alienated and apart from the real world."