During summer break, many teachers will assign a project that is designed to give students the freedom to work at their own pace and fully discover and interesting topic. When this project is designed too specifically by the teacher, however, many students become disinterested and only do the bare minimum of work. In order to keep students motivated, and make the project beneficial in their future lives, students should be allowed to design their own project for the summer. Student-designed summer projects motivate pupils to create higher quality products, solve diverse real-world problems, and develop unique skill sets that cannot be learned inside the classroom.

On the other hand, there are many who support the use of teacher-designed summer projects, because they are more related to the subjects taught in school and thus more useful in furthering students' education. Opponents cite several studies that show students forget nearly ten percent of what they learn in school over summer break. With a teacher-led project during the break, students will be encouraged to remember and use what they have learned in school instead of letting months of hard work in school go to waste. While it is true that students will learn more of the curriculum through a teacher-designed project, a better use of the time during summer is to teach subjects not covered in the curriculum. Topics that are specific to certain career fields can only be learned through independent study, and student-led summer projects are the most effective way to encourage this kind of study.

When students are given the freedom to choose a project that plays to their interests and learning style, instead of being forced to do a certain project by their teachers, the quality of the students' projects improves dramatically. One way that this freedom encourages a higher quality project is by increasing student engagement. Modern psychological studies have shown that students are less driven to succeed at a task if they feel they are being forced to accomplish it. Students allowed to choose their own summer project would not feel forced into a specific course of action, increasing their engagement in the assignment and thus the overall quality of their final project. Designing their own project also creates a higher-quality product by adapting it to their own learning styles. Psychologists working in the field of memory have found that students often learn best in one of four learning styles: Reading/Writing, Auditory, Visual, or Kinesthetic. With the ability to adapt the requirements of the assignment to their learning styles, students would create a higher-quality product with much less unnecessary effort. Because of this increase in quality, student-designed projects are also very effective at solving real-world problems.

Projects that have been chosen and designed by students create solutions to real-world problems in ways that teacher-led ones cannot. By deciding on their own projects, students can pursue interests that lie outside of the usual subjects found in school. Summer projects designed by teachers usually focus on one of the few categories of science, english, or mathematics that schools teach. Students who are provided the opportunity to design a project on their own will be able to pursue fields of study that are not touched on by schools, gaining knowledge in many other diverse areas of study. In addition, the ability to choose their own projects allow students to tackle problems that face our world today with their own unique solutions. As one example of this, a team of students who chose their own project for science class was able to create groundbreaking new technology for removing floating debris from the ocean, which has the potential to improve the lives of billions of people who depend on the health of the ocean to survive. If more students could pursue their interests in the same way that this team did, many new solutions to today's problems would emerge. In addition, students who pursue their own interests in this way are also much more prepared for their chosen careers in the future.

Student-designed projects develop unique skills in students that are not learned through teacher-led study. One skill that independent projects teach is the ability to do creative, independent work. As adults, many find that leadership positions in the workplace require some degree of creativity, and tasks must often be completed with little input from those higher in the chain of authority. By allowing students to produce their own ideas and work on their own schedule, rather than assigning students ideas and schedules, student-led projects encourage the traits that are necessary for any productive member of society. In giving students the independence to try out their own ideas, these projects also allow students to learn skills that are not covered by the main subjects of traditional schooling. For example, a student interested in becoming a veterinarian would not learn very much about his or her desired career through the core classes, but would learn a great deal through a project requiring him or her to study animals. Student-designed projects, therefore, are much more effective than teacher-designed ones when it comes to preparing students for their future professions, and for their future lives as a whole.

When students are presented the opportunity to design their own summer projects, they become motivated to improve the quality of their work, make a lasting impact on the real world, and develop unique skills that can aid them in future careers. When students are given the freedom to choose who they want to be early on in their lives, they become better equipped in the future to make their dreams a reality. In order to produce students who are skilled, effective, and motivated to succeed, teachers should allow their students to choose what subjects they would like to explore during the summer.