“College isn't the solution for everyone."”

Amanda Pfaff

PEAK TO PEAK - Even if she could have afforded it, she was never particularly interested in learning about the world from inside a classroom. 

After she graduated from high school in 2024, Tiger Lockheart began looking for jobs that she could commit to temporarily in order to start funding her dreams of traveling the world. She eventually applied for an AmeriCorps position at Cal-Wood Education Center, an outdoor education center located near Jamestown with a mission of helping children from low-income and immigrant families in Colorado experience nature. 

At Cal-Wood, Lockheart felt she’d found her passion and an access point to a career she’d never thought was attainable: a job as an outdoor educator. 

“[This] gave me the opportunity to have my dream job right off the bat, and there would have been a lot more barriers in the way if the AmeriCorps position hadn't existed,” Lockheart said, noting that similar jobs typically require two college degrees.

“College isn't the solution for everyone," said Amanda Pfaff, a program director in the Montana Conservation Corps (MCC), an AmeriCorps program. "AmeriCorps provides people an alternative, an opportunity to find their strengths and passions without putting them in debt.”

AmeriCorps sends close to 200,000 service members to project sites across the country to aid in areas such as disaster relief, economic opportunity, education, environmental stewardship, community health, and veteran services. Over 50% of AmeriCorps members don’t have a college degree. 

Focus groups and exit surveys conducted by AmeriCorps indicate that a majority of members join because they believe the program offers them an entry point to various fields and hands-on training opens doors that otherwise may remain closed: 86% of participants say that working in the conservation corps helps them further their professional goals. 

“This job came around, and I think it just opened up so many more doors for me,” Lockheart said, discussing her new dream of becoming an international instructor.  

In April, Lockheart was among the thousands of AmeriCorps members to receive the news that their program funding was cut, effective immediately. Lockheart wasn’t sure if she would have a job at the end of the month, much less until the end of her service in August. 

AmeriCorps failed eight of its last financial audits, with several problems arising consistently over the last eight years, according to a report from the National Taxpayers Union Foundation, a nonpartisan lobbying group. This led some in Congress to claim that AmeriCorps was—as Republican Congressman Tim Walberg said—“a poster child for waste, fraud, and abuse,” making the organization a perfect target for DOGE.

The cuts were met with rapid pushback, and Colorado and 23 other states successfully sued to reinstate AmeriCorps funding to over $400 million to nonprofits across the country.

Even as the reinstated funds were slowly released back to programs from the 24 states in the lawsuit, thousands of programs are still recalculating their futures. 

“I don't know that in the near future programs that were cut will recover, because there's too much uncertainty,” said Jono McKinney, CEO/President of Montana Conservation Corps. 

Lockheart was able to keep her position at Cal-Wood thanks to some help from statewide programs as well as the lawsuit. But the damage is done.

 Unable to afford the uncertainty that currently faces many remaining AmeriCorps programs, Cal-Wood Education Center, where Lockheart did her term, posted the education position as a full-time job, ending their association with AmeriCorps. 

With AmeriCorps programs under real threat, an avenue for young people to pursue careers outside the classroom is shrinking. AmeriCorps programs often offer professional certifications that can boost an applicant's chances of being hired, particularly for federal jobs.

 Studies published by the government agency indicate that serving in AmeriCorps lead to better education attainment, increased wages, and reduced unemployment for alumni. 

There's also the Segal Education Award, which members are granted at the end of their service. That can be applied to anything from paying off student loans to certification programs. Around 70% of AmeriCorps members join in order to utilize the education award.

Trae was among those hoping to utilize the education awards he’d stacked after working in the Conservation Corps in Colorado, Utah, and New York. He had earned these over his maximum four terms of service, hoping to pay for a community college forestry program. 

He’d always dreamed of working in conservation but knew that he could never afford college without additional aid. 

“Trying to get these jobs, competing with people that actually have degrees, it's a real uphill battle,” Trae said. “It's going to be difficult to really get further in my career without a degree.”

Trae began serving in the New York, New Jersey Trails Conference earlier this year before the program lost funding briefly in April. For a week, he was out of work until states stepped in to fund the rest of his season. He is now paid an hourly wage with no overtime and no chance of an education award.

To Trae, defunding AmeriCorps feels like a betrayal of the American values of equal opportunity he was raised with.

“I thought the whole part of being an American is that you're free to pursue your dreams,” he said. “And it really puts me in this, this hard box, because I don't know how to navigate anymore. All of these jobs are closing around us. Parks are[n’t] hiring nearly as much. It's going to get way more competitive to get these jobs.

"I have no idea where I'm going to stand.”

When AmeriCorps was re-funded, Trae’s education award was restored, but it was still a fraction of what he had planned on.

“AmeriCorps was an opening for people from lower incomes, people who couldn't really afford to go to college, but still had this passion,” Trae said, “It really shuts a lot of us out of these opportunities now.”

“I think, to exist, you're going to have to get creative,” Montana's Pfaff said.

Most of those working in AmeriCorps, whether as corps members or for the programs that hosted them, will figure out how to adapt to a world in which AmeriCorps funding is more limited or nonexistent. They’ll be scaling back operations or hiring. Or they will simply close down operations. 

It’s not just individual people's careers that could suffer. The communities they serve are going to be impacted, too.

On average, AmeriCorps programs see a $17 return on investment for every $1 the government spends. For MCC, the average is almost double that, at $34. 

Countless studies show that AmeriCorps interventions positively impact the children in schools where members tutor. They help restore natural habitats over the years. They improve the quality of life of seniors they interact with.

AmeriCorps members also show a greater sense of community and civic duty. They are more likely to volunteer after their service. These are thousands of small ways that communities will be a little less supported than a year ago. 

“I really do believe in the value of engaging citizens to make our country better,” McKinney from MCC said. “That whole ethic that actually volunteering and serving your community helps make America work and get better…. [If we lose it], what does that do to the life of our country?”

Eliza DuBose recently finished a term serving as a crew lead in the Montana Conservation Corps. Her experience helped inspire her reporting for this story.