Andrew J. Holmes offers a mixed assessment of Strauss's article:

As a former Peace Corps volunteer, former international development worker, and current MBA candidate, I find that the author’s arguments cite legitimate problems with the Peace Corps, but in doing so points out some of the strengths of the program.

Many large organizations, government and otherwise, are riddled with inefficiency, and I believe that a further analysis of Peace Corps' finances would likely prove that it is relatively lean for a government organization. Medivacs and the bureaucracy that involves medical complications are a large expense, and it is amazing that Peace Corps is as inexpensive to taxpayers as it is after taking this into account. I doubt the American taxpayers get more bang for their buck in any international development, military, or entitlement programs.

Giving Peace Corps concrete goals to accomplish would be an extremely difficult task, given the variety of circumstances within and across countries in which volunteers operate. Much of the development community struggles with establishing benchmarks for performance; the fact that Peace Corps volunteers often operate in fringe areas makes this all the more difficult. While at first sounding like a good idea, in many cases specific benchmarks would either doom volunteers to inevitable failure or, to prevent this failure, would prevent volunteers from ever entering a site to begin with. In fact, a major component of a Volunteer’s assignment lies in their assessing the situation, and developing attainable goals based on the environment. An enforced plan from Washington would force volunteers to attempt to fit square pegs into round holes.

Emily Armitage, a Peace Corps volunteer currently serving in Bulgaria, begs to differ with Robert Strauss:

Strauss misrepresents a reputable initiative of the US government while devaluing the work of many current and past volunteers. While Strauss argues that many younger volunteers are immature and unqualified, my experiences have taught me otherwise.

Volunteers must be passionate, energetic, flexible and adaptable. There is great value in having volunteers from every age group. Each volunteer offers a different skill set and background, representative of the diversity in America. Yet, often, skills learned in the United States are inapplicable in the developing world due to societal and cultural differences. Often, highly skilled Americans can make ineffective volunteers because they lack some of the other characteristics essential to success in a foreign environment. Volunteers must adapt their perspectives and be willing to learn from their native colleagues.

Older volunteers often have difficulty learning the language, which can limit their contacts within the community. The Peace Corps must recruit volunteers willing to spend two years of their lives in difficult, sometimes primitive conditions and it may be harder for older volunteers to adapt to a lower standard of living. While older volunteers have more life experiences, many younger volunteers possess knowledge of technology, web design, e-mail and the Internet--integral skills for the developing world.

Strauss criticizes the organization's reliance on personal anecdote as an indicator of success. Certainly, rigorous evaluation must be a critical program element but grassroots development encompasses more than statistically validated economic improvement. The impacts are often qualitative and intangible. Grass roots development work empowers people to make sustainable change. The results are usually felt individually or locally. The Peace Corps budget is miniscule compared to those of other US government agencies and international development organizations. We receive a living allowance equal to the local standard and must utilize resources within our community to provide training and develop projects. Peace Corps volunteers are not given money to implement projects. This calls for a nuanced approach to determine and respond to local needs. Often broad overarching policies become illogical within the context of a specific country. It is highly likely that Strauss' experiences in Cameroon differ greatly from the issues facing Bulgaria.

Peace Corps volunteers are not professional development workers. Most move on to other professions while retaining the values and lessons learned abroad. Our experiences make us better, more informed citizens of the world and enable us to share a unique perspective with our fellow American citizens. Of the three Peace Corps goals, the second and third have a resounding impact—to help promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served and to help promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans. We provide the face of America in some of the most remote parts of the world. We show ordinary people that the United States is not a militant superpower without regard for the rest of humanity.

Recently my grandfather wryly questioned me, "Why is it called the Peace Corps? You aren't at war with these countries." Upon consideration, I would say it is one of the best preemptive strategies out there. Volunteers provide a platform for dialogue, exchanging ideas and vision with the citizens of their host countries.

Tyler McNish, a former Peace Corps volunteer in Guatemala, writes in:

 

Based on my own observations, I think your criticisms are right on point. However, with respect to the root causes of the shortcoming you correctly diagnose, I think you over-emphasize the extent to which un-motivated, inexperienced, or low-aptitude volunteers are to blame for Peace Corps' shortcomings. I think the real problem is the way those volunteers are utilized by Peace Corps as an organization.

 

There are many organizations in the United States that are able to take fresh-out-of-college employees of modest talents and harness them to tasks in a way that creates value for the organization.  How? By directing their work. A good organization creates an environment where knowledge flows from experienced employees to less-experienced employees. Similarly, the experience of the older employees is "leveraged" by the relatively cheap younger employees.  With this insight in mind, I think your argument would be strengthed by more explicitly recognizing the following two points.

 

First, we should lament that Peace Corps insists on being an "anti-organization," where inadequate direction of entry-level employees (i.e. volunteers) and reinvention of the wheel are counted as virtues. We have done ourselves a disservice by canonizing "The Peace Corps Experience," in which a young volunteer is inspired to question his beliefs and his place in the world by confronting the challenge of working in a foreign environment....  Personally, I found my own Peace Corps experience so intoxicating and rewarding in large part because of the extent to which I was forced to rely on myself.  However, I can't deny that my work would have been a lot more beneficial to Guatemala if it had been better directed. By casting cultural adaptation as an end in itself rather than a means to doing effective development work, we have made Peace Corps an experience that is valuable to volunteers personally but not to the country in which they work.  I think this is a sacred cow that we have to challenge along with what you delightfully call "the myth of immaculate conception."

 

Second, change has to come from Peace Corps staff, not from volunteers.  The country director I worked under had two priorities for her organization: (1) improving safety & security and (2) rooting out what she called "the Peace Corps party subculture."  She didn't seem to care what I was doing as long as I was (1) in site and (2) sober.  That I might be sober and in site, but agonizing over how to be more effective in my work and hungry for more support from Peace Corps staff appeared to be of no interest to her. Worse, her approach to her second goal was to terminate volunteers she thought were "bad apples" who indoctrinated new volunteers into the "subculture."  Twelve volunteers were sent home during my two years; the rationale in every case was not that they weren't working, but that they were endangering themselves through their "party" behavior.  I think that she missed the true root cause of the problem--that Peace Corps staff failed to engage volunteers in their work. More specifically, they consistently failed to put them in positions where there work was hard enough to keep them interested but not so hard that the volunteers gave up and wrote off their two years as a travel experience.

 

I recognize that these complaints are specific to the Peace Corps country in which I worked, and that other Peace Corps missions do take more of an interest in volunteers' work. Nevertheless, I detect a little of the "bad apples" thinking in your article. Therefore, I would ask you to consider the following: Are the bad apples the main problem, or are they a distraction from the main problem?  How can we expect that PCVs treat their two years as more than a travel/cultural experience when PC doesn't set them up to do good, relevant development work and doesn't care whether they succeed in their work or not? And how can we say that Peace Corps needs more talented volunteers when the talented volunteers it does attract are under-utilized?  Volunteers are the raw material; staff are the artisans. We shouldn't blame the raw material if the finished work doesn't come out right.

FP reader MC weighs in on "Think Again: The Peace Corps":

As a recently returned Peace Corps Volunteer from Ukraine, I would tend to agree with some of what Mr. Strauss argued in his article... while still seeing Peace Corps as serving a useful purpose. Peace Corps is in some ways the post-college study and party abroad opportunity for those with little or no work experience. In one of our training sessions, we were told half-jokingly that the only thing we could do wrong in our two years of service was to get drunk and fall down in a ditch. I believe that the comment was based on an incident that happened earlier in the year.

On the other hand, it is also a great chance for motivated young adults to gain much-needed experience in the international development field that can serve as a stepping stone to a future career. During my time in Peace Corps, I witnessed both types of volunteers: those that over-drank and generally embarrassed the United States of America, and those whose service truly made a difference in the world. I found that the best volunteers were those who were able to find small successes despite the cultural, linguistic, and bureaucratic obstacles.

There are indeed aspects of the Peace Corps that need to be reevaluated. The site placement process to determine where volunteers will serve definitely needs to be adjusted. Many times, volunteers seem to be assigned to sites at random with little input from the person affected most by the placement decision -- the volunteer.

Overall, the Peace Corps volunteer receives much more from the experience than he/she does for the country of service... In the end, the volunteer's attitude (along with a little luck) determines whether it's worth the taxpayer dollars spent and the volunteer's time.

You can check out previously posted letters here and here, or send in your own thoughts.