What will USAID feeder schools do now?

There are thousands of universities and colleges across the United States that offer courses to train the next generation of foreign service and international development professionals. With the job market somewhat depleted by the recent dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development, many are unsure what it means for those courses and the students relying on them. “If you had a school or a program that was traditionally an aid feeder, who and what is that program for now? Why would anyone hand you $250,000 to do that?” asked Colin Steele, an alumni career coach at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service. “That's an admissions question, a communications question, an alumni relations question, a career services question. At the end of the day it's also a faculty question. Who are we attracting, what are we teaching them, and what are we promising them?” A total of over 9,500 USAID staff are expected to lose their jobs as part of the Trump administration’s plan to dismantle the agency and merge some of its functions into the State Department. Additionally, with the withdrawal of USAID funding from over 80% of its projects, many USAID recipient organizations, including Mercy Corps and the International Rescue Committee, have also had to lay off staff around the world. For people who had been dreaming of working in this space, it may impact their decision of what to study and thus the numbers enrolling in international development programs, said Greg W. Burch, associate professor and director of the master’s program in global development and justice at Jessup University, a private Christian university in California. “I hope not to the extent that they have to dissolve or remove those programs, but I would not be surprised at all,” he shared. On the other hand, many affected by the cuts are considering now as the time to upskill and take a course they’ve always wanted to, said Steven Radelet, director of the global human development program at Georgetown University, which could also impact numbers. “We’re seeing people who are saying, ‘I thought I was going to go get my master's degree next year or the year after, but now's the time.’ That will have a positive impact,” he said. It is, however, too early in the year to decipher whether enrollment numbers have been affected by the USAID dismantling, he shared. But with higher education as a whole going through what she describes as “an existential crisis,” Stephanie Worden, assistant dean for enrollment, marketing and communications at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies within the University of Denver, believes there will likely be a dip in interest in such courses at some point. “[Higher education] has a lot of damaging rhetoric around our perceived political affiliations, around student loans, around the value of higher education, and then combine that with what's happening to USAID and other particular U.S. institutions that need these degrees and I do see this as a flashpoint,” she said. The worry, however, is that fewer people enrolling in the likes of international development, public policy, global health, and humanitarian courses will eventually lead to a gap in the global development talent pipeline when the world is still facing a multitude of challenges. “There won't be a cohort of educated international affairs development folks entering the space, meaning they're not getting the expertise, meaning they're not getting those first-level jobs, so then there'll be this gap while the need will still exist,” said Worden. In fact, Fatema Sumar, adjunct lecturer in public policy at Harvard Kennedy School, believes that the missions of public policy and international development are more important now than ever. “So we're still going to need to invest in top talent, to create new institutions, to help with other institutions maybe outside of the U.S. context for a while,” she told Devex. For too long, she believes that too many American educational institutions have relied on U.S. federal pathways to employment, and now could be the time for upcoming graduates to consider other roles. “There's much more to the development sector than just what happens in Washington, D.C.,” said Sumar. The role of foreign service feeder schools With that in mind, rather than canceling courses should there be a decline in enrollment, those Devex spoke to believe the courses just need to be adapted to make them more applicable to the current context, and that students should be reminded that USAID isn’t the only place to work. “As important as USAID is and as important as foreign assistance is, it's not the only way to work in development,” said Radelet, citing domestic nonprofits, multilateral banks, impact investment firms, and private organizations working on environmental, social, and governance. “We think at the moment that we don't require an enormous pivot. We're certainly not going to abandon development work,” he shared. Instead, Georgetown plans to widen how it teaches development to include domestic entities, the impact of private investment, and how businesses can affect development. It will remove the emphasis on how USAID would approach a problem to how a private sector entity or local NGO would approach it, Radelet said. “We'll probably add a couple more elective courses that will be on business skills and possibly on state and local governments,” he added. Burch suggested course content focus on localization, private funding, advocacy, and grant writing, while Sumar believes the USAID void will open up space for innovation and social entrepreneurship. “Then maybe we want to help train people on how to create an NGO [or] a board of directors, [on] setting up governance legal mechanisms to be in compliance, to be a 501(c)(3), [on] merging with other institutions?” she said. “We have complex global challenges, so we should be thinking about what are the skills that our students will be needing over the many years to come to tackle those challenges.” At Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, Setu Van Lare-Hodges, associate director of global affairs told Devex in an email that it has no plans to revise the core content of its courses as its curriculum is already designed “to provide students with enduring analytical frameworks and global perspectives that remain relevant across shifting policy and economic landscapes.” Alumni have gone on to work in over 1,000 unique employers in 85 countries, which Lare-Hodges said shows alumni’s “ability to adapt and pivot in a rapidly changing global market.” For current students, many of whom Worden said are worried there won’t be a job market for them to enter when they graduate, The Josef Korbel School of International Studies is hosting information sessions on how the skills that their degrees are equipping them with can be transferable to NGOs, the private sector, a philanthropic or multilateral organization. The school has also created scholarships for those previously working for the U.S federal government or affiliated agencies and looking to pivot their skills. But rather than a college-by-college approach, educational institutions should be innovating on international studies curriculum together, Worden said, explaining that colleagues among The Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs are already convening around this. “How do we communicate to the broadest possible audience that this degree matters, service matters, education in this space, and expertise is important?” she said. “At the end of the day, all of us that work in this space are trying to recruit and retain students to make our world better.”