by Thomas Brodey
With its small budget and secluded work, the United States Peace Corps is one of the least conspicuous arms of US foreign policy. Yet the agency, originally founded in 1961 as a way for Americans to work on community development abroad, still exerts a major influence. In many developing countries, such as Madagascar, where I served, volunteers are most people’s only exposure to American diplomacy. And for those volunteers who complete service, the Peace Corps is a proven path into the Foreign Service and foreign policy establishment.
Despite its apparent stability, however, the Peace Corps is currently facing two of its largest challenges in decades, one acute and one long-term.
The Recruitment Challenge
In 2024, there were only 3,620 Peace Corps volunteers (PCVs) in service, down from a pre-pandemic level of 6,648. Throughout its history, the Peace Corps has drawn almost exclusively from a narrow slice of college graduates in their early to mid-twenties. Today, however, that demographic shows less interest than ever in volunteerism. With student debt still rising and college attendance decreasing for the first time in modern history, there is no reason to believe that the Peace Corps’ recruitment challenge will go away.
The Skill Challenge
The second challenge is even more serious, because it puts into question the Peace Corps’ ability to achieve its own objectives. As set down by Congress in 1961, the first of Peace Corps’ three goals is to “help the people of interested countries meet their need for trained workers.” But in truth, the Peace Corps is largely an amateur business. Besides a semester spent studying abroad or a volunteering stint at a summer camp, most volunteers have little experience with agriculture, youth development, or the skills required by the other Peace Corps sectors. In my 17-person education cohort, for instance, only two or three had any experience with teaching. The ratio was even worse in my post’s agriculture sector.
The two challenges are interconnected. Fewer applications forces the Peace Corps to become less selective and the average volunteer to become less skilled. Any public skepticism about Peace Corps’ efficacy will in turn tarnish the agency’s reputation and further hurt recruitment.
In the past, few have questioned the Peace Corps’ recruitment model, but we live in a more cynical age than the 1960s. During his first term, President Donald Trump attempted to cut the agency’s $400 million budget. Now that he has returned to office, the Peace Corps will be under serious pressure to justify its continued existence.
Finding Non-Traditional Volunteers
To address its recruiting shortage, the Peace Corps recently unveiled pilot programs offering more money and benefits for PCVs in certain countries. But this is not a complete solution. If the Peace Corps wants to remain relevant, it should focus on incorporating a group of skilled workers that it has too often sidelined: non-college educated volunteers.
While non-college educated people with at least five years of work experience are technically eligible to serve, they almost never do. More than 98% of volunteers have a bachelor’s degree.
That’s a significant oversight. Almost two-thirds of American adults lack a college degree. Volunteers without degrees can bring practical skills to developing countries in areas such as mechanics, agriculture, or construction. Even service-based jobs like waiting tables or looking after kids could be relevant. As an education volunteer, I quickly learned that social skills like conflict management, public speaking, and working with children were at least as important as mastery of the content I was teaching.
During the volunteers’ three-month training period, the Peace Corps assumes no prior experience. But how much more effective would volunteers be if they also had four or more years of professional training to draw upon to help their communities?
There are understandable reasons behind the Peace Corps’ failure to attract volunteers without degrees. Two years of living abroad for no pay is a tough sell even for students right out of college, let alone for someone years into a career. But the Peace Corps has exacerbated the problem by crafting incentives that only apply to volunteers with college degrees. For example, one of the Peace Corps’ biggest perks is the Coverdell Fellowship, a partnership where schools offer returned volunteers generous scholarships for more than 200 graduate degree programs. Similarly, the Peace Corps offers returning volunteers a shortcut to federal jobs, but these jobs all require degrees.
A New Peace Corps Fellowship
If the Peace Corps is serious about broadening its base, it needs to offer relevant incentives for volunteers without degrees. For instance, the Peace Corps could use the Coverdell model as the basis for a new Shriver Fellowship (named after the first Peace Corps Director, Sargent Shriver).
A Shriver Fellowship would gather colleges from around the country and encourage them to offer scholarships, course credit, or even conditional acceptances to volunteers without a degree. Just as with the Coverdell Fellowships, everyone gets what they want: schools get students with unique life experience, volunteers gain an affordable education (still America’s best path toward higher income and even a longer life), and the government boosts Peace Corps recruitment without having to pay a dime.
Another reason that the Peace Corps overwhelmingly gets volunteers with 4-year degrees is that college campuses are a naturally efficient and cost-effective place to recruit. But there are other high-density areas to consider. For instance, the Peace Corps should devote more effort to recruiting from non-traditional schools, such as trade schools or community colleges. Students from these schools are likely to offer valuable skills to the Peace Corps and might find the opportunity of a funded bachelor’s degree enticing.
There is one final advantage to recruiting volunteers without degrees and sending them to college after service. Returned volunteers could be the finest free recruiters the Peace Corps could ever have. Students would get to hear firsthand about the Peace Corps from their Shriver Fellowship peers. Paradoxically, recruiting non-traditional volunteers might also end up yielding a large number of college-educated volunteers.
Of course, reversing decades of Peace Corps tradition would come with some complications. Almost half of Peace Corps host countries refuse to give visas to foreign workers without certain degrees, so volunteers with bachelor’s degrees will probably always remain in the majority. Still, the infusion of volunteers with practical work experience will make a more diverse, skilled, and dynamic volunteer force.
Opening the Peace Corps to all Americans would reaffirm the agency’s values. When he created the Peace Corps, John F. Kennedy intended for the agency to offer an addition and alternative to the State Department’s traditional diplomacy. It would enlist Americans “from every race and walk of life” unified by the idea that simple acts of service, generosity, and friendship can make a difference. The small caste of young college graduates holds no monopoly over these values.
In an era where college education is perhaps the most significant dividing line in American politics and culture, the Peace Corps has a duty to draw on talent from across the country, not just a few college campuses.
Thomas Brodey is a writer based in Boston. His commentary has been published in the Wall Street Journal, Inkstick, and Responsible Statecraft, among others. After graduating from Amherst College, he served as an education volunteer in Peace Corps Madagascar from 2022-2024.