Encouragement of service as public work is one strategy higher education can use in fulfilling its civic mission to socialize society's future leaders. The diversity of American higher education includes large land grant state universities, small liberal arts colleges, religiously sponsored institutions, and local community colleges. This array helps explain the many legitimate forms of service that social scientists have observed within and across campuses. But not all types of service are equally likely to promote participatory citizenship and instill lasting civic identities. This article offers a rationale for public work that fits the contemporary economic and political times. The mediating institutions that sustain civic traditions are in place. Young people's sense of fairness and justice has not diminished. The question, then, is whether higher education will make the effort to bring the promise of public work to fruition.