Posted on 01/26/2024 5:50:38 AM PST by Enlightened1
The Army is tossing its mandate for potential recruits to have a high school diploma or GED certificate to enlist in the service, in one of the most dramatic moves yet in the escalating recruiting crisis hitting the entire Defense Department.
On Thursday, the service announced that individuals may enlist without those previously required education certifications if they ship to basic training this fiscal year, which ends Oct. 1.
Recruits must also be at least 18 years old and otherwise qualify for a job in the active-duty Army. They also must score at least a 50 on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, or ASVAB, an SAT-style quiz to measure a potential recruit's academic ability.
50 on the test is a relatively low score, with 31 being the minimum to qualify for service. Combat arms jobs such as infantrymen and cavalry scouts need only minimal scores to serve, while admin work such as a human resources specialist or public affairs require scores of 100 or higher.
Previously, the Army would allow people to enlist if they hadn't finished high school yet at the age of 17 with parental consent. Those recruits typically wouldn't ship to basic training until they completed school.
The change follows another shift in policy this week when the service relaxed its tattoo rules, allowing potential recruits to enlist with tattoos on their hands and neck, which previously needed waivers.
The Army and its sister services have scrambled this year, offering increasingly generous benefits and policy tweaks in an effort to improve recruiting numbers. The Army has hit 40% of its recruiting goals this year, with the struggle to fill the ranks seemingly so grim the Defense Department reduced its planned total force size because prior recruiting goals were out of reach.
(Excerpt) Read more at military.com ...
LOL, it was based on the needs of the Army at the time. IIRC, borderline soldiers were sent to classrooms to beef up their reading comprehension.
Thanks for your service, Top. I’ll take a bit of issue with your comments regarding officers, but I understand where you’re coming from. My problem was with staff officers that were sent to command batteries. For me, it was like having CPT Sobel as a CO. I was No Dick Winters or Sam Damon, but I was competent enough after I flunked my first ARTEP, and that’s when the light came on.
Not me.
“All I can say is where I went. I was also 25 y/o.
There was around 30-40 guys & girls in the room.
I took the EPDT solo, the same day at MEPS.”
I don’t doubt your personal experience. You were probably relatively close to the MEPS. My recruiting station was 3 hours away. I was just making the point that not everyone takes the ASVAB at MEPS, which, in retrospect, is pretty trivial.
Gotcha. I was in Jacksonville, FL at the time.
USAF.
Back then, MEPS was called Armed Forces Examining and Entrance Station (AFEES), so I assume they did testing.
“I took a pre-ASVAB at school with the entire class (late 10th grade) and the ASVAB at Camp Pendelton, CA.”
That “pre-ASVAB” was probably the real ASVAB. The military convinced schools to administer the ASVAB as a vocational counseling tool; that it would indicate what fields students would do well in. There also may have been a financial incentive, but that was above my head. In my time, recruiters would get a dot matrix print out of the results including scores, contact information, and demographics. That list was by far our number one recruiting tool. If you were called by a recruiter that’s most likely where he got your number.
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