The Clipboard: Army worries about quality

From an article¹:

Struggling to boost its ranks, the Army is recruiting a higher number of high school dropouts and recruits who score in the lowest category on military aptitude tests, raising concerns among senior officers and defense analysts that the quality of the force will suffer.

Five months into the recruiting year, the percentage of recruits in the active-duty Army without high school diplomas is more than double the percentage of last year. The number of recruits who scored the lowest on the aptitude test has also more than doubled and is the highest since 2001.

Though the Army has fallen short of its recruiting goals, senior commanders are less worried about making the numbers than they are about lowering standards, according to an officer who has seen briefings by Army recruiting generals.

"Quality" is the issue "that's going to be the dilemma," the officer said. (link)

More evidence of the Bush administration destroying the Army as an institution. So much for "supporting the troops".

---

Complete text of the article, Army worries about quality, by Tom Bowman

Struggling to boost its ranks, the Army is recruiting a higher number of high school dropouts and recruits who score in the lowest category on military aptitude tests, raising concerns among senior officers and defense analysts that the quality of the force will suffer.

Five months into the recruiting year, the percentage of recruits in the active-duty Army without high school diplomas is more than double the percentage of last year. The number of recruits who scored the lowest on the aptitude test has also more than doubled and is the highest since 2001.

Though the Army has fallen short of its recruiting goals, senior commanders are less worried about making the numbers than they are about lowering standards, according to an officer who has seen briefings by Army recruiting generals.

"Quality" is the issue "that's going to be the dilemma," the officer said.

Top officers at the Army Recruiting Command at Fort Knox, Ky., were not available for interviews. A spokesman for the command, Douglas Smith, said that despite recruiting challenges, the Army would not exceed a self-imposed ceiling for recruits who are below average.

"I am confident we are going to stay within the quality mission set by the Department of the Army," he said.

The difficulty in attracting and retaining qualified recruits has also led some analysts to suggest that the Pentagon revise its policies regarding gays and women, which critics say have kept valuable talent out of the military or combat positions at a critical time.

The Army's goal by the end of the year is 80,000 recruits, although it missed its February recruiting goal by more than 27 percent. The Army signed up 5,114 in February, 1,936 short of the 7,050 it needed.

It was the first time since May 2000 that the service missed a monthly goal, even though the Army is offering signing bonuses of up to $20,000 and is sending hundreds of additional recruiters to encourage young men and women to enlist.

Lawrence J. Korb, a former assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration, said maintaining quality will be difficult for the Army, which has struggled to find recruits in the midst of a brightening economic picture and a stubborn insurgency in Iraq, where about 1,500 American service men and women have died.

"What it says is, in order to meet your recruiting goals you have to choose less-capable recruits," he said. "The impact is these people have a higher dropout rate and take longer to train. The Army you take out of Iraq might not be really as good as the one you sent in."

David Segal, a military sociologist at the University of Maryland, said that historical research shows that those recruits with at least a high school diploma have fewer disciplinary problems and are more likely to complete their tour of duty.

"There's a very firm finding that smarter soldiers are better soldiers, doing their jobs and surviving on the battlefield," he said.

According to statistics provided by the U.S. Army Recruiting Command, for the first five months of this fiscal year, there were 1,184 recruits accepted who earned a diploma by passing the General Educational Development, or GED, test - as opposed to graduating from high school - and who scored 31 to 49 on the aptitude test, where the highest score is 99. That is about 3.3 percent of the 36,314 recruits who have either signed a recruiting contract or shipped to basic training.

For all of 2004, the Army brought in 1,060 from that category, or 1.5 percent of the 70,383 recruits. Moreover, the Army has recruited 667 soldiers this year who are deemed Category 4, those who scored less than 30 points on the military aptitude test. That is 1.8 percent of the recruits so far this year. Last year, the Army accepted 440 soldiers from Category 4, or about 0.6 percent.

'Cat 4'

The percentage of soldiers scoring in this lowest category is the highest since 2001, when the Army was also struggling to meet its recruiting goals and brought in 1.9 percent from the so-called Cat 4.

In the Army Reserve, the number of recruits scoring lowest on the aptitude test has also doubled from 2004, though the number of those without high school diplomas is about the same as last year.

Smith, the spokesman for the Army's Recruiting Command, said the Army would not exceed its self-imposed limit of 2 percent of its recruits from Cat 4, though the Pentagon allows up to 4 percent to be drawn from this category. And he expects that at least 90 percent of recruits will have at least a high school diploma.

"Our mission is to both make our quality goal and our quantity goal," he said.

Faced with similar challenges in 1999, the Army failed to reach its goal of 75,500, bringing in 68,210. But the Army did not go above 2 percent from Cat 4, and 90 percent of its recruits were high school graduates.

Asked about concerns that lower-quality soldiers pose discipline and training problems, Smith said that although "high-tech skills" are required for many jobs in the Army, "the Army recognizes there are people who have a GED and score in Cat 4 who can still be effective soldiers."

One Army officer who worked in recruiting and requested anonymity, agreed that some Army jobs, such as a soldier who loads shells on a tank, could be handled by a Cat 4, but those soldiers rarely progress and often leave after their first tour.

The difficulties in recruiting are reminiscent of the late 1990s, when Pentagon officials were faced with a full-employment economy and decided to bring in more high school dropouts to reach their goals.

Then-Navy Secretary Richard Danzig proposed bringing in twice the number of high school dropouts, saying that a high school diploma "is not the be-all and end-all" and that employment history and other indicators should be weighed. His Army counterpart, Louis Caldera, also sought to bring in more recruits with GEDs, though members of Congress complained of lowering standards.

Today, however, the recruiting market seems even more troublesome, analysts said, not only because of a brightening economic picture, but also because military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq show no sign of ending. Officers say surveys show that the "influencers" of potential recruits - parents, teachers and coaches - are less likely to recommend the military because of the violence in Iraq. As a result, Segal and Korb said the military should consider new ways of attracting recruits.

Possible policy changes

Both say the military should do away with its "don't ask, don't tell" policy, which bars openly gay soldiers from serving in the armed forces. A group of more than 50 House members filed a bill last week that would reverse the 12-year-old ban.

The Pentagon should also consider opening more jobs to women, who are barred from frontline ground combat jobs, Segal and Korb said.

Korb said that trying to draw an "artificial line" for women between combat and noncombat jobs makes no sense, particularly in places like Iraq, where there is no front line.

Segal said another solution might be for the military to open the ranks to undocumented aliens as a path to earning citizenship. "All these ways of broadening the base would not solve the [recruiting] problem but would certainly chip away at it," he said.

reference=http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-te.recruits07mar07,1,6779323.story?coll=bal-nationworld-headlines