thedrifter
10-31-06, 04:14 PM
October 31, 2006
Recruits maintain high quality, new study says
By Gordon Lubold
Staff writer
Contrary to what many believe, the quality of military recruits has not declined, according to a study done by a conservative think tank in Washington.
The Heritage Foundation looked at criteria such as race, education and income level and found that contrary to media reports cited by the study, the overall quality of “wartime enlistees” has remained stable over the last few years.
“A pillar of conventional wisdom about the U.S. military is that the quality of volunteers has been degraded after the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq,” the report begins. “Examples of the voices making this claim range from The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and New York Daily News to Michael Moore’s pseudo-documentary ‘Fahrenheit 9/11.’ ” Such reports, the study says, indicate that there is a disproportionate representation of minorities and lower-income people serving in the military, while others “accuse” the Army of accepting unqualified enlistees.
Not so, says Tim Kane, an analyst at The Heritage Foundation.
“The current findings show that the demographic characteristics of volunteers have continued to show signs of higher, not lower, quality,” Kane wrote
In fact, the review of Pentagon enlistee data, which contains information from 2004 and 2005 but not this year, shows that the only enlistee group with a shrinking representation is, in fact, lower-income Americans. The percentage of enlistees from the poorest neighborhoods, which encompass one-fifth of the U.S. population, declined from 18 percent in 1999 to 15 percent in 2003; and further to 14 percent in both 2004 and 2005, the report said.
When the Pentagon released its fiscal 2006 recruiting numbers earlier in October, senior defense officials insisted they had not changed their recruiting standards. That is largely true, since overall standards for the number of high school graduates, for example, has not changed. But what did change, particularly for the Army, which struggled to meet its recruiting goals in 2005, was the number of enlistees who have high school diplomas, which has been declining recently.
Military aptitude test scores and a high school diploma are the primary traditional measures of “high” recruit quality.
Ellie
Recruits maintain high quality, new study says
By Gordon Lubold
Staff writer
Contrary to what many believe, the quality of military recruits has not declined, according to a study done by a conservative think tank in Washington.
The Heritage Foundation looked at criteria such as race, education and income level and found that contrary to media reports cited by the study, the overall quality of “wartime enlistees” has remained stable over the last few years.
“A pillar of conventional wisdom about the U.S. military is that the quality of volunteers has been degraded after the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq,” the report begins. “Examples of the voices making this claim range from The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and New York Daily News to Michael Moore’s pseudo-documentary ‘Fahrenheit 9/11.’ ” Such reports, the study says, indicate that there is a disproportionate representation of minorities and lower-income people serving in the military, while others “accuse” the Army of accepting unqualified enlistees.
Not so, says Tim Kane, an analyst at The Heritage Foundation.
“The current findings show that the demographic characteristics of volunteers have continued to show signs of higher, not lower, quality,” Kane wrote
In fact, the review of Pentagon enlistee data, which contains information from 2004 and 2005 but not this year, shows that the only enlistee group with a shrinking representation is, in fact, lower-income Americans. The percentage of enlistees from the poorest neighborhoods, which encompass one-fifth of the U.S. population, declined from 18 percent in 1999 to 15 percent in 2003; and further to 14 percent in both 2004 and 2005, the report said.
When the Pentagon released its fiscal 2006 recruiting numbers earlier in October, senior defense officials insisted they had not changed their recruiting standards. That is largely true, since overall standards for the number of high school graduates, for example, has not changed. But what did change, particularly for the Army, which struggled to meet its recruiting goals in 2005, was the number of enlistees who have high school diplomas, which has been declining recently.
Military aptitude test scores and a high school diploma are the primary traditional measures of “high” recruit quality.
Ellie