Posted on 11/05/2006 4:44:47 AM PST by Pharmboy
SENATOR JOHN KERRY says he flubbed a joke aimed at President Bush when he warned a group of students last week that they would get “get stuck in Iraq” if they didn’t work hard in school. The president says Mr. Kerry demeaned the military by suggesting its men and women were “uneducated.”
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Is the military a career of last resort for the uneducated?
Though the military has a smaller proportion of college graduates than the country at large, it turns out that it has a higher proportion of people with high school diplomas, according to a comparison of figures from the Pentagon and the Census Bureau.
About 97 percent of the 1.4 million Americans serving in the active duty Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines have graduated from high school or the equivalent, according to Pentagon figures. That compares with 85 percent of all adults 25 years or older who reported they had completed at least high school, according to the Census Bureau.
Roughly 17 percent of the active duty members of the military have a bachelor’s or graduate degree, the Pentagon figures show, while in the nation as a whole, 28 percent of adults reported they had at least a bachelor’s degree.
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College graduates have historically been underrepresented because the military focuses most of its recruitment efforts on high school students, and many of them join so they can eventually earn a college degree with the help of the G.I. Bill of Rights.
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“The quality clearly improved after we ended the draft and went to an all-volunteer force,” said David Segal, a military sociologist at the University of Maryland. “My sense is that it is going down now slightly at the margins, with fewer high school graduates signing up, but that’s only at the margins.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I'm amazed that the NYT has an article that mentions something about the military that:
1) Is the truth
2) Wasn't leaked to destroy the credibilty of the military.
I truly believe that The Times occasionally places an article like this just to help them justify "balance" in their reportage. But, they're not fooling anyone.
Essentially, they are the communications wing of the DNC occasionally producing an article that does not hold the dems in a perfect light.
Maybe you don't remember those as the Navy lowered its standards and brought in the S3A in the mid '70's.
LOL...of course I knew them when they were actual S2's, but I was only a teenage kid walking around them at the flight line at Cubi Point, PI.
Heh, no offense meant...:)
No offense taken. Its just COD term brought out some old salt.
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