Federal Budget Cuts Impact Environmental Jobs: Students Are Scared

Gemma Mueller ‘27
muellergal@lakeforest.edu
Staff Writer

Environmental studies students depend on healthy ecosystems for their future careers — and income. Now, with the Trump administration disrupting the EPA and environmental initiatives nationwide, students like Zoey Young fear for their professional futures.  

“This is definitely a scary time to be a climate-based scientist,” said Young, a Lake Forest College senior majoring in Biology and Environmental Science. 

To date, President Trump has exited the Paris Agreement, an international treaty on climate change, and signed at least six orders on environment-related issues, including “Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential,” which supports extracting oil and timber. Many environmental studies students at Lake Forest and elsewhere are left wondering whether these changes will impact their future graduate school and job opportunities. 

Consider: On Valentine’s Day, a National Park Ranger lost his “dream job” as an environmental educator at Effigy Mounds National Park due to federal funding cuts, according to an NPR report. A mass firing of about 1,000 National Park workers followed, news reports show. 

“This is flat-out reckless,” said Alex Wild, after his job as the only emergency medical technician (EMT) at Devils Postpile National Monument in California was suddenly cut. 

The most heartbreaking part, he told The San Francisco Standard, “is what’s going to happen to the physical parks themselves.”

At Lake Forest College and other universities, the budget cuts are also a concern for students considering graduate programs specializing in environmental sciences. 

Young said she knows of at least one environmental research program at risk of losing its federal funding, after speaking to a researcher at North Carolina State University. 

“His advice for me was to find a program that has longstanding, established funding or look outside of the country,” Young said. “I had honestly never even considered that research in my field might be hindered in the upcoming years.” 

Associate Prof. Brian McCammack, chair of the Environmental Studies Department at Lake Forest College, agreed. Signs of the current environmental policies look “bad,” and things may get worse before they get better, he said. 

“Jobs will not go away,” he said he tells students. “They just might not be exactly what you planned on doing.”  

However,  McCammack  remains hopeful. In the decade from 2012-2022, the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded in environmental studies increased by 72%, according to Data USA, a website operated by the MIT Media Lab.

In fact, the number of Lake Forest students declaring a major in Environmental Studies has increased to more than three dozen. McCammack and his colleagues are also working on expanding the environmental studies curriculum. This would allow students a more diverse course selection that may help their long-term job search.  

“We can get back to where we were several years ago,” McCammack said. “The glimmer of hope is that we’re all coming together.”