I heard a story today, that the US Navy is in such dire straits for recruiting right now, that they are dropping the requirement to have a high school diploma or GED. Here is a link to the Navy Times article I found confirming the story.
Of all the vets on here, I’m wondering what you think of this. If you’re a Navy vet, I’m especially interested in your opinion of this move.
I’m neutrally waiting to see if this spreads to the other branches myself. I think I’m indifferent mostly though. It’s interesting to me as an Army vet, and I can see some drawbacks as well as advantages to this, but overall, it seems like an average tuesday kind of thing in a way.
This will ensure the service(s) will be spending even more time and money on finishing the education of these kids enough so that they can be taught whatever skill. Plus of course there is a correlation between failure to finish HS& GED and being a screw-off. Some of whom come to their senses, but by no means all.
This is also a hell of an indictment of how badly our society works for so many of our young people. Largely because it also works (and worked) so badly for their parents.
I donno, I know that there are people who like the idea of being in the military and want to join, but I’d think for a much larger percentage it is an option of last resort taken out of desperation. To me it seems like the fact the military is having to go to extreme lengths to get enough recruits tells me than fewer people are needing to go to such desperate measures for a job/career.
Said another way, maybe it needs to pay better to attract the quality personnel needed.
I was a newbie officer in USAF when Reagan pushed through a large pay raise for the whole military. Felt good to me. But which simply undid about 10 years of inflation during which there had been no pay raises. So for anyone who’d been in for, say, 8+ years, it felt like too little too late.
Under the new plan, Navy recruits without an education credential will be able to join as long as they score 50 or above on the qualification test, which is out of 99. The last time the service took individuals without education credentials was in 2000.
Also of import is this bit from the OP’s link:
The Navy said the policy change does not mean the service is lowering its standards, and that these prospective sailors must still qualify for specific ratings based on their Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, or ASVAB, line scores.
So, it’s not just “bring in all the people who flunked out of high school”. It’s an opportunity to bring people into ratings that do not require a high score on certain elements of the ASVAB. That same link explains how the AFQT is computed.
On the other hand, I think it would be useful to the recruiting command to know why the person did not complete high school, what grade they last completed, and how long they left school. Instead of making it a blanket acceptance, get that information and apply for a waiver of the high school credential. I like to think of this as the “assessing the whole person” that was the big buzz phrase while I was in service.
I retired from the US Navy as a Personnelman First Class.
Not according to this statement from the article (which you may wish to take with a grain of salt):
Other things I found interesting in the article: the fact that this is not unprecendented (“he Navy last allowed those without a diploma to enlist in 2000”) and the suggestion that Covid may be at least partly to blame for some not having high school diplomas (“This policy update benefits the Navy by expanding the potential applicant pool of highly qualified and motivated future Sailors who may have been impacted by COVID-19 trends of non-traditional schooling, early exit from high school to support their family, or a variety of other individual circumstances”).
Nothing new. It just doesn’t usually make the news. The military constantly moves the enlistment requirements left and right to meet recruiting goals or to tighten things up when the pool of recruits is overflowing or there is a draw down. Before I went to Basic in the later 1900s I was told they were not accepting anyone with a GED. High school graduates or higher only. When you get to Basic everyone around you signed up around the same time but not the same day. They were pulling people out of class to take GED classes. The requirement had changed. Some of those around me didn’t even have a GED. Sometimes the standards change from month to month.
That also should be taken with a grain of salt. The reality is, the economy is good, and yet life in the Navy sucks just as much as it always did. So when one thing changes (the economy) but the other doesn’t (quality of life in the Navy), you’re going to see Navy have a more or less difficult time attracting a certain quality of recruit than it otherwise would.
A weak economy helps the Navy grow its numbers, a strong one does the opposite.
Give it a few more months. If the economy stays strong, the requirement for a 50 on the ASVAB for non-grads will come down, never mind lingering effects of COVID (or not) on HS completion.
I remember taking the ASVAB in high school. We were all herded into the auditorium to take it on multiple choice computer-scored bubble cards whether we wanted to take it or not. I’m sure we must have been told something about it ahead of time, but I went in knowing basically nothing about what it was. I bubbled in my name as John F. Kennedy, but didn’t know the address for Arlington Cemetery so I just used my real address and phone number. I remember simple puzzles like drawings of sets of gears and you had to pick the direction a specific gear would rotate in, having been told how another of the gears rotates. After I took it somebody involved went through the effort of getting my real name, and since I got a 97 I was harassed at home by recruiters calling me for months afterwards, and unfortunately the respose “lol, no” hadn’t been invented yet and I was too much of a polite Southerner to give the “go fuck yourself” that I wanted to give
Wait the requirement was 50? I swear the requirement was like 37 at some point because I was in the Army in the early 00s with someone with a 37, they were a unit armorer of all jobs.
Of course jokes on the Navy, after serving in the Army for six years and being bored with civilian life I decided to try to reenlist in the Navy sometime in 2010 because I really wanted to be on a boat for some reason, and the Navy recruiters looked at me like I had a weird disease, and basically told me “We will get back to you after we process our current recruits” but they never did.
Yeah, I remember being surprised in the mid-late 2000s that the Army was taking recruits in their forties. They don’t do that anymore.
I recall there being surprisingly high standards at one point in the 90s as well- like high school graduate AND some ASVAB score that wasn’t trivial. All because the force structure was smaller and they could pick and choose.
It’s all dependent like @ASL_v2.0 points out on alternatives. If a kid can go get a good-paying job right out of high school, he’s not as likely to choose the military. But if the economy sucks, it’s much more viable. And the military tweaks the requirements to get the numbers they want depending on how many/how good the applicants are.
Pretty sure that’s with a waiver. I looked into the ASVAB because one of my grandsons is contemplating the military after high school. I’ve tried to impress on him that just passing the test is meaningless, as you need to score high enough to qualify for schooling or you’ll end up as a grunt.
As for the HS diploma or GED requirement, I had a lot of troops that were dumber than a bag of hammers, so that’s not a guarantee of excellence. I’d take someone with drive and perseverance over someone who got A’s in history.
Further, eligible to enlist does not translate to eligible for whatever rating you want. I was a submariner. A lot of the guys working for me had at least a couple of years of college under their belt. My Leading Petty Officer (seniormost enlisted) for my first division was better educated than I was, having recently earned a masters in EE. Many of these guys had college degrees before they enlisted; they just weren’t interested in being an officer. The submarine service has always been all-volunteer and able to be picky; I don’t see that changing.
A high school diploma isn’t about intelligence. It’s about the very drive and persistence you’re talking about. Someone who’s as dumb as a bag of hammers, but who has drive, will graduate high school. Probably not with As, but they’ll get through. Someone of normal intelligence but completely unmotivated won’t. Someone who’s very smart but completely unmotivated might, but only if they’re so smart that passing is less effort than failing, and that’s very rare.
The reason most employers require a diploma is not to weed out the dumb employees, but to weed out the unmotivated ones.
I don’t know about the Navy but it was the same with the Army. Each MOS had its own requirements. If I remember correctly being a cook had the lowest requirements. I don’t remember my overall score but my MOS required at least a 115 GT (along with other requirements).
