Hurting for recruits, Navy opens its arms to dropouts
In the latest sign that the nation’s armed services are struggling to attract recruits, the Navy will accept young people who did not graduate from high school.
The Air Force has been allowing it for years, although those without diplomas make up less than 1% of all recruits.
The Navy decision, announced in late January, is intended to reverse a dismal trend in recruiting. The service missed its goal for the 2023 fiscal year by 7,000 sailors.
A Navy spokeswoman, Capt. Jodie Cornell, said relaxing educational standards will expand “the potential applicant pool of highly qualified and motivated future sailors who may have been impacted by COVID-19 trends of nontraditional schooling, early exit from high school to support their family or a variety of other individual circumstances.”
Recruits without diplomas are called Tier 3 applicants. Cornell said the new policy could allow as many as 2,000 of them per year to join the Navy.
They have to score 50 or higher on the 99-question
Armed Forces Qualification
Test.
“Sailors who enlist under this policy change can achieve personal and professional growth by earning their GED while gaining experience in cutting-edge technologies and learning professional skills that allow them to exceed their expectations while serving in the Navy,” Cornell said.
It’s not the first time the Navy has recruited dropouts. It allowed Tier 3 applicants before 2000 during another difficult recruiting era. The program was discontinued then because of “the slightly higher attrition of Tier 3 recruits in the training pipeline,” Cornell said.
It’s been brought back because “the same past experience demonstrated that Tier 3 sailors in the fleet make excellent service members with a high level of motivation, loyalty and patriotism,” she added.
‘Maintaining quality’
The Air Force said it’s always accepted some high school dropouts. Over the past five years, the service has sworn 690 Tier 3 recruits into the active-duty ranks. That was .05% of all new recruits during that period.
Those without high school diplomas or GEDs have to score 65 or higher on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, a test designed to measure aptitude in four “domains”: verbal, math, science and technical, and spatial.
The Air Force said that for all recruits, 65 is an aboveaverage score, the average is 55 and the minimum passing score is 31.
“Air Force Recruiting wants to emphasize that we are maintaining quality standards in our recruiting process by ensuring they score well on the ASVAB and meet all other accession standards,” said Leslie Brown, a spokeswoman for the Air Force Recruiting Service at Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph.
The Air Force also accepts what it calls Tier 2 applicants. They must have a test-based equivalency certificate, such as a GED, and score 50 or higher on the ASVAB.
Of recruits who arrive for basic training at JBSA-Lackland, 99.5% have a high school diploma or GED. According to recruiting service data, 21.5% have 15 hours or more of college, 5.6% have a bachelor’s degree and 0.4% have a master’s.
Still, the Air Force had a rough recruiting year in fiscal 2023, missing its target by 13%, which translated to 2,700 fewer active-duty airmen than hoped for. It was the worst performance since 1999. Recruiting for the Air National Guard and the Air Force Reserve fell short of their goals by 30%.
The Navy and Army, too, missed their recruitment targets. Only the Marines and the Space Command hit their numbers.
Hoping to reverse the trend, the Air Force in October raised the maximum age for new recruits from 39 to 42. The new ceiling applies to enlisted and officer recruits but not pilots, who must be 33 or younger to join.
“We are not lowering any of our standards,” said the Air Force Recruiting Service’s commander, Brig. Gen. Christopher Amrhein. “Someone who is 42 still has to meet the same accession requirements as younger applicants.”
‘Definitely not’
Recruiters expect the age change to bring in only about 50 additional recruits. But every little bit helps in winning over a population that is largely uninterested in military service. Perhaps the biggest problem recruiters face is the lack of familiarity with the armed services among many young people and their parents.
Those in the military often have relatives who served: parents, aunts and uncles who acted as “influencers” and recommended military service. There are fewer influencers out there because not as many Americans have served in uniform since the end of the Cold War.
Another problem: Many people who might otherwise join are not qualified. Some have criminal records. Others can’t meet height and weight requirements or are excluded because of past drug use.
A 2023 Pentagon poll of people ages 16 to 24 found that just 2% said they’d “definitely” join the military and 7% said they “probably” would. The survey revealed that more than 1 in 3 respondents said they would “probably not” serve and 58% would “definitely not.”