A month ago, I heard that my internship at the Department of Defense was canceled. 

With graduation in a few weeks, I was jobless. After having interned for a United States senator, studied abroad in Jordan and written my honors thesis on U.S.-Jordanian diplomacy, my ability to impact the world using my college degree was stunted. 

Like hundreds of other students facing federal job cancellations, I was left asking: What now? 

My experience is a testament to the reality that the Trump administration is discouraging accomplished college students from pursuing careers in public service. What does the future of America look like when the federal government is a “brain drain” of the most educated minds? Further, what does a future workforce look like that devalues public service because our government is defunding it? 

The death of the public service workforce

Countless layoffs of federal employees are an affront not just to the fired employees but also to the quality of federal government administration. 

When my internship was canceled, I lost both my post-graduation plans and my security clearance, which took months to attain. The internship office told me that because I had never been onboarded, I would need to redo this entire clearance process if another job required it. 

My story is insignificant in comparison to those of federal employees who invested years or decades of their lives into public service before being laid off. 

This internship program aimed to bring America’s top students to U.S. defense initiatives. With this program canceled, that goal can no longer be achieved. Likewise, programs including the Presidential Management Fellows program, which aims to onboard students with specialized skills into the federal government, as well as several departments’ Pathways Internships and the Institute for Politics Director’s Internships, have been canceled. 

The Trump administration has swiftly wiped away incentives for students to join and improve our federal workforce. 

At the same time, broad exemptions to Trump’s federal hiring freezes are arising as departments strive to fill their labor needs. I spoke to a few government agencies trying to launch unpaid internship programs or programs in which students can be paid by an outside contractor. However, the barriers to enacting these programs have deterred many program directors from ultimately pursuing them. 

Additionally, who would want to risk working for an unpredictable administration that could fire them in seconds? Unpaid programs also exclude students who need a salary. Personally, I will not be returning to the federal workforce in the near future, knowing that I’ve invested months into an application process and security clearance only to be laid off via email. 

Trump’s administration, because of its hiring freezes, layoffs, and unconstitutional executive actions, is becoming a “brain drain,” which discourages intelligent, qualified people from entering government. 

Since Trump took office, 113,331 federal employees have left the federal government. Of those, 36,091 were laid off by the Department of Government Efficiency, and the other 77,000 resigned on the condition of being paid through September. 

So, what will happen to students aspiring to public service careers? 

The cancellation of my government internship was particularly frustrating because I had been discouraged from pursuing a career in public service throughout college. At Vanderbilt, my peers often suggested that working for the government would not be financially secure or fulfilling, and the majority of on-campus recruiting events focus on corporate fields. As a result, I’ve networked with Vanderbilt alumni and federal employees on my own throughout college, and I attained my DoD internship with persistence and luck via LinkedIn.

Because of our country’s rising cost of living and the reality that a majority of capital in America flows to Wall Street and large corporations, high-achieving undergraduate institutions are filled with students who aspire to careers in business, or who are otherwise tempted to abandon their aspirations in lower-paying fields to work for large corporations. 

Thus, the cancellation of my government internship seemed to be the cherry on top of my generation’s skepticism, which is driving us to simply try to survive in this economy rather than seek careers fighting for social, economic and political change. 

We can’t blame students for doing what they feel they need to do to survive in our country. Many students can and will have fulfilling lives in the corporate workforce (as I hope to). College students’ desire to be “financially well off” increased, particularly in the 1970s and ‘80s. It has especially increased in the past five years as high tuition costs, inequality and the high cost of living have driven up the number of students striving to maximize their salary. 

This increase is coupled with students’ growing skepticism of their ability to produce meaningful social change. Students’ adapting to pursue new career paths in a society with a high cost of living — and now, fewer federal job opportunities, is a good thing. However, our generation’s skepticism, which drives us away from change-driven careers and radical student protests, is not. 

The consequences of public service dying in America 

Many students and laid-off employees are turning to work in the private sector in the face of federal layoffs. 

Generation Z is becoming disengaged from politics and the future of our nation. Young people are going into corporate careers because the government is defunding federal service careers, as well as life-saving research. Restricting capital restricts people’s desires to bring their talents to the government. 

Furthermore, civilians’ and corporations’ distrust of the government often makes them disinterested in engaging with it. In 2018, for example, Google employees successfully protested the company’s federal defense contracts. Silicon Valley firms and their employees are skeptical of whether the government is truly here to defend us, especially when we still do not have a ceasefire in Gaza, and when the Trump administration is failing to protect our allies like Ukraine. 

Who will defend us when we, as citizens, react to our distrust of the government by disengaging from the government? 

Trump’s federal layoffs have prompted me and thousands of other students to take corporate jobs, which will have a tremendous impact on the character of America’s next generation. We already live in an unequal society in which college students don’t believe they can make a difference. With more and more opportunities to make a difference being defunded, we as a society are becoming less and less civically engaged. 

Even as we do what it takes to survive in America, we cannot become a nation of survivalists who disassociate from the government just because we are skeptical of it. The government and nonprofit sectors are still the core of our nation, enabling us to make change. 

We must continue to call on this administration to change and to serve its role as an equalizer and provider in an unequal society. If we fail to do so, we run the risk of becoming, more than we already have, a nation which does not believe in the common good but, rather, in every man or woman for themself. 

We cannot let that happen.