Matthew C. McLaughlin had a decision to make.

A U.S. Department of Labor employee helping homeless veterans find work, McLaughlin had been accepted to Harvard Kennedy School’s mid-career master’s in public administration program.

To attend a required pre-semester seminar, he needed time off. But his agency said no.

“Got to the point where I had to choose between going to the school or stay keeping my job,” he said. “It was a really good job. It paid well. I liked what I did.”

He quit.

McLaughlin arrived at HKS last August expecting to return to federal service after graduating this May. A year later, after watching classmates who had worked at USAID and other agencies lose their jobs amid restructuring tied to the Department of Government Efficiency, that plan feels less certain.

“A lot of people that I met at the Kennedy School are people who did get fully DOGE’d, people from USAID,” McLaughlin said. “They just got let go completely with no warning at all.”

“I just saw the writing on the wall that this was not going to be a desirable place to work anymore,” he said.

His experience reflects a broader shift at the Kennedy School, where students and faculty say the traditional pipeline from HKS into the federal government has narrowed — and with it, the assumption that a degree from the school leads directly to a career in Washington.

Amid sweeping layoffs, agency restructuring, and a more volatile hiring environment, many students are rethinking their timelines, turning instead toward state and local government or the private sector.

Jake C. Green, a second-year master’s in public policy student who previously worked in public service, said he once saw his Harvard degree as a near-guarantee of entry into government at any level.

“People who already occupy these really exciting jobs are out, and they’re not hiring to replace them,” Green said. “To be able to survive in this tumultuous economy, I’m looking like I need to get some sort of private sector job or something that pays more than public sector work does.”

Green said he also worries how his affiliation could carry political baggage, as the Trump administration has escalated its pressure on the University and Harvard has worked to put out fires in Washington.

“I feel like pre-Trump admin, I could have gone into almost any agency with the skills I’ve acquired here,” he said. “The credentialing of having a Harvard degree, the network I’ve been exposed to, I feel like I would have been able to find a job pretty easily.”

“And now I feel like the opportunities, of course, are severely diminished,” Green added. “There are just fewer places that I could work realistically, especially at the federal level.”

For Charlee N. Doom, a master’s in public administration student and former Foreign Service officer with USAID, the issue is less about job listings.

“I think that the larger issue of there being an all out assault on civil servants at the federal level is the reason that there are fewer people looking at near term careers in public service,” Doom said.

Many of the students she talks with, she said, still plan to work in government — just not yet.

“The people that I’m talking with are talking about public service careers after this administration,” Doom said. “And so doing something in the interim, whether it’s civil society work or private sector work, finding something to bridge a gap.”

“If you’re a graduate of Harvard, you have a great degree of autonomy in what you do next,” she said. “Why would you want to go somewhere where you're literally being brutalized by your government?”

Even students committed to public service are reconsidering where to start.

McLaughlin said he is now focused on state government, a path that feels more stable.

“The federal government is definitely not, right now, a great place to be looking for a job,” he said.

Paige Swem, a mid-career master’s in public administration student who previously worked in Michigan state government, said the narrowing of federal opportunities is pushing students to consider roles they might have overlooked.

“Now that there’s less federal jobs, more people are looking at traditionally unavailable jobs or things that they maybe didn’t know about,” she said. “State and local is a little less understood, so I’d be excited to see more people go into them.”

Linda J. Bilmes, a Kennedy School professor who places students in local government through an experiential course, said interest in state, local, and regional roles has grown noticeably this year — more than she has seen in previous years.

“This year a large number of our students, probably more than ever, are excited about the opportunities to work in state, local and regional government after graduation,” Bilmes wrote in a statement.

Bilmes said those roles have become especially attractive because state and local governments are “less partisan, more innovative, and they are hiring HKS graduates.” She pointed to the abolition of the Presidential Management Fellows program, long one of the primary federal pathways for Kennedy School graduates, as one of the factors accelerating the shift.

HKS has sought to counter that drift. In a February 2025 email to students, faculty, and staff, HKS Dean Jeremy M. Weinstein emphasized that public service was a core complement of the school.

“Public service is at the core of who we are and what we do,” he wrote. “We are united by our commitment to ensure that public institutions deliver and improve the quality of people’s lives.”

But even as the school reinforces that commitment, students say the near-term calculation has changed.

Bryan Montes, a first-year master’s of public policy student who previously worked at the Department of Energy, said the current climate has made certain government jobs feel more politically exposed than they once did.

“A lot of things that were viewed either as like, less political or not political in the past, have been politicized,” he said.

Students entering HKS straight from college, Montes said, seem especially likely to look at the private sector first — lacking prior government experience to anchor them to a federal career path.

“I think a lot of them are probably now considering more private sector roles,” he said.

Not everyone at HKS reads the moment as a reason to wait.

Luis Hong Sanchez, a first-year master’s of public administration student, said he has heard competing views among classmates — some who feel too misaligned with the administration to enter federal service now, and others who think the moment demands engagement.

“I’ve heard also friends say that this is precisely the time when you should go to work, go into public service, because you’d be the saner voice in the room,” he said.

“If you don’t take up that role,” Sanchez added, “somebody with positions that you may disagree with even more may take those roles.”

HKS professor Cornell W. Brooks said that argument resonates with him, even as he acknowledged the constraints students now face.

“At the end of this administration, no matter what administration comes next, there is going to be a long effort to rebuild,” Brooks said.

—Staff writer Sophia E. Alcacer contributed reporting.

—Staff writer Jen L. Phan can be reached at [email protected] and Signal at jenphan.74. Follow her on X at @jenllphan.