The Consequences of Lowering the Standard

The Consequences of Lowering the Standard

With our nation’s soldiers coming under constant threat of deployment in support of ongoing operations in Iraq, the military’s recruiting efforts have suffered. Since combat operations in Iraq started in 2003, recruiters working to staff today’s Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps have increasingly had to rely on applicants they would have previously turned away. In short, the standards for recruiting have decreased in order to keep accession numbers up to par during an increasingly unpopular war. The Army, in particular, is enlisting more felons and fewer high school graduates, with lower test scores, than ever before.

Recently, the Army has reconsidered admitting convicted felons. In 2007, the Army granted 511 people a felony waiver allowing them to join the military (CNN). This number, almost double the 249 granted the year before, reflects a hard decision made by the Army’s superior recruiting officers to change the standard in order to enlist the number of soldiers needed to fight in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). These felony waivers were for charges that included breaking and entering, aggravated assault, and communicating terrorist threats. In an article published by CNN.com, Henry Waxman, (D-CA), is quoted as saying that the rise in felony waivers could be “a result of the strain put on the military by the Iraq war” (qtd. in CNN). In this case, the numbers don’t lie – clearly, the Iraq war has led to a rise in waivers for criminal misconduct.

In years past, the Army was closed to anyone without a high school diploma. Then, before the war in Iraq, it allowed potential applicants with a General Education Development (GED) diploma to enlist, as long as they were able to score at least a 50 on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (or ASVAB, the entrance exam for all the Armed Forces), for which a passing score is normally only 31. This higher score requirement kept the number of...