In promising to encourage more public service by college students, candidate Barack Obama was following a rare lead: President George W. Bush. But, like Bush, he has been forced to temper his goals.

In 2002, after his State of the Union speech, Bush proposed requiring every college and university to spend half of its federal work-study funding on community service jobs. U.S. Sens. Evan Bayh, D-Iowa, and John McCain, R-Ariz., also introduced legislation that would boost the percentage of work-study funding spent on community service jobs from 7 percent to 25 percent.

But under the work-study system, the students" employers chip in. Groups such as the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators have been wary of boosting the public service requirement because charitable groups may not be able to pay their share, putting a larger share of the burden on colleges themselves. The Bayh-McCain bill failed to pass, and other efforts to significantly increase the amount of work-study money targeted to public service jobs have gone nowhere.

This March, however, Congress beefed up the requirements and added incentives for schools to encourage public service. The "Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act," H.R. 1388, requires every college and university to meet the 7 percent threshold. (According to an investigation by the Medill News Service, many colleges were surpassing the 7 percent limit but others weren"t reaching it.) The act also established grants to help schools get students involved in community service projects and created the Campuses of Service program, which provides extra funding for up to 25 institutions of higher learning that have demonstrated a major commitment to community service-oriented curricula and volunteerism.

There are apparently no active bills now in Congress to raise the community-service requirements for the federal work-study program any further. While Obama didn"t get all that he had promised, he did get some. PolitiFact.com rates this promise as a Compromise.