I will post the counter poise to this topic.

I attended many schools thoughtout my life and I have had the pleasure to enjoy all type of radio.

Getting to play around with a transmitter of more then 1500 watts is just one benefit of working at a AM / FM radio station.
I'm not saying that I was paid or that I was physically employed at any of the stations that I had visited - but I know people who have gone on to become great radio announcers - because of their experience while in College.

There is pluses and minuses to any type of job or any type of radio license.
WDQU? Duquense University - Pittsburgh PA - was mainly centered around the black community - I think I am allowed to say BLACK in this for instance, because that was what it was.

Pittsburgh was a steel town and the steel was made off the backs of hard working individuals - some of whom were colored.
People work with the promise that if they work hard and save their money they can some day send their children to school - so they will not have to struggle the way the parents and grandparents did.

Duquense University was one place where the colored person was not turned away - reguardless of their academic achievements.

The main music format of their radio station was JAZZ.
Now mind you - I am not into JAZZ , nor is any of my White Angelo Saxton Protestant friends, but there is people who might like listening to it.

In a world where you are not allowed to segregate people anymore - it seems that it is ok if colored people does something for the benefit of other colored people - but don't you dare use it for yourself if you are white!

When the state ran out of money and had to cut back funding for the Universities across Pennsylvania - WQED - which is probably one of the oldest Universities to sponsor a PBS station - you can read the bio of WDTV and KDKA to understand what I am talking about - went into panic mode and started non stop pledge drives. They cut back almost to the bone all public local programming - which included laying off Dave of the Dave and Dave Show.

They got rid of the most expensive programming - which included THE NEW RED GREEN SHOW! ONE OF THE MOST POPULAR TELEVISION SHOWS - NOT BRITISH COMEDY'S ON PBS TELEVISION.

At the same time WDQU sold off it's FM / AM radio station entirely.
Legally I don't know how they can do it.
WQED even has a home shopping network television station on one of their sub channels - or they did at one time, and another PBS station affiliated with WQED went off the air completely when the DTV transistion transpired.

None of these transactions is for the benefit of the students, all we are teaching these children is how to make money and how to save money.

On the other hand, there is a station in Clarion PA - part of the Clarion University of Pennsylvania WCUC = which back in the 1980's would let students on the air, allowing them to play music and produce programs for the general public and for the entertainment of the local college community.

I can attest to the fact that their weak little station was being monitored at night as far away as Indiana PA, because we were putting up antenna's so we could listen to their broadcasts.

There were DJ's on there that were playing Heavy Metal Music when Heavy Metal Music was not a top 40 type format.
The people playing that music would have never been able to ever play what they wanted when they graduated and got a job in broadcasting.
Hence - although it was a white school - not a lot of colored people wants to go to mid western Pennsylvania where it is cold in the winter, lot's of snow and not a lot of other colored people around.

You say there is no benefit to them spinning records and I say there is.

You don't seem to understand how broadcasting works.
In the real world, AM and FM radio is not free!
You give up a portion of your life in exchange for getting to listen for free to music, news , weather and what interests you.
The station pours cubic dollars of money into electricity, salaries, rent / taxes / maintenence and upkeep, insurance etc - just so you can listen to your couple of minutes a hour of commercials.

The sponsors of the show - which WDTV ( Dumont) was the innovator of what we know as commercial television today.
Before the 1950's - when he came out with his model of television, each program was sponsored by just one or two sponsors.
Each sponsor determined what the programming was going to be and if you didn't do it the way they told you to do it - they pulled their sponsorship dollars out and you were left looking for a new sponsor for the show or the show was cancelled.

One of the points of commercial radio is that you have to have people pounding the keyboard, the telephone, the pavement - looking for new sponsors - advertisers so you can keep the lights on.
IN this day and age, where there is more ways of telling a person NO - it is pretty hard to even find a young energetic person that is willing to try to make a living in sales.

I say - let the kids have their fun, they have the rest of their lives to be adults in a adult world of Dog Eat Dog.
If there is 24 hours in the day and their license allowes them to broadcast 18 hours a day, let them broadcast - taking their turns being a big time DJ in a small town. Most times there is no one listening to them anyways.

A LP radio station might only have a radius of about 10 miles for their ERP anyways.

This is how they gain experience and this is how they develope their on air skills and this is how they make their demo's that they can use later in life to get mininum wage jobs in the real world of broadcasting.

We aren't all Johnboy's and Billy's and we are not all Jeff Christie either.

Now you ask - who the heck is Jeff Christie?
Look it up - http://user.pa.net/~ejjeff/christie.html