U.S. army drops requirement for high school diploma (2022)

[klipklop]

A bit of sensationalism going on. They still have to pass a standardize test that mostly proves they have an IQ suitable for military service.

There are people that could be a great soldier/servicemember that didn’t make it through high school. Some will flourish under a military environment that failed out of high school.

I don’t really like people assuming somebody that didn’t graduate high school are somehow inferior or stupid people. The issue is complicated.

[nindalf]

That standardised test administered by the US military has some history. The idea was that folks who were below an 85IQ would be harder to train. During the Vietnam war they tried abandoning the requirement and the results were sad. It cost the military a lot more in remedial training, but the real tragedy is that these folks died at 3 times the rate of people who would have passed the test. They weren’t cut out to be sent to a war zone.

So intelligence is important for military service but a person’s completion of high school isn’t an indication of low intelligence. They may have dropped out for any other reason. It’s entirely possible that they may flourish in the structured environment the military offers.

It’s fair to ask if the IQ test is a good measure of intelligence, or if it’s measuring something else. But in this context, it’s measuring something that is strongly correlated to success as a solider.

[bsder]

I suspect the real issue is that a high school diploma doesn't represent a signal anymore at the low end.

Many failing students simply got passed through grade to grade.

If a high school diploma has no value as a signal, requiring it throws out eligible people for no reason whatsoever.

[mdhb]

Not only are you correct here but the personality type you are describing is actually a quite common one in that environment.

People who did terribly in the context of a class rooom but thrive in the military in very complicated roles.

This recent interview with the commander of Delta Force comes to mind for me but what you’re describing is not rare. It cuts both ways like any organisation, there’s plenty of people who don’t thrive there as well but I’m not upset about this change at all, I think it’s sensible overall.

https://www.youtube.com/live/d_mI3XxiNec

You can listen to that person for just 5 minutes and see exactly what I’m referring to

[PeterStuer]

Back in the day my country still had obligatory military service for the oldest male child of the family. Everyone had to do this. IQ tests were used to sort people coming in.

The military does not only need highly functioning autonomous operators. There were many more menial positions in cleaning, catering, hauling and warm body canon fodder than there were scouts or special forces.

I guess these days many of those auxiliary functions are farmed out in very lucrative deals to select private companies.

[halJordan]

The problem is that a high school education represents literally years of knowledge a person has accumulated. People not having that knowledge means they will not be able to participate.

It's not about whether they will be smart enough to learn; it's about the fact that they will have to be taught. There's no foundation to build on, there's no axiomatic knowledge we can rely on.

People who haven't graduated high school are inferior. They're not less human, but they are incontrovertibly less able.

Denying that might feel good, but society didn't mandate 10 years of public education for shits and giggles.

[rollcat]

100x this. One of the smartest, most compassionate, successful, and resourceful people I've ever met, is a high school dropout. Even the story of that dropout alone is amazing (he managed to secure a huge grant for the said school, and decided there are more important/interesting things to do next).

[spoonjim]

Even with a decent IQ, failure to finish high school usually indicates very low commitment / time preference / overall “with it” ness. It’s not a good thing that this is the future of our military but not at all surprised that the military is having recruiting problems.

[diceduckmonk]

I was constantly failing classes in high school, but I ended up as an engineer at FANG company without breaking a sweat. My cofounder didn’t finish high school and worked as an HFT trader.

People here who are judging people based on their high school accomplishments must be coming from a sheltered middle class background.

[emayljames]

Yes exactly. For all the flaws and bad practices of the military and its recruitment, hitting down on people with bad circumstances is not flexing on those flaws and bad practices of the military. People's worth shouldn't depend on a high school diploma.

[johnnyanmac]

>I don’t really like people assuming somebody that didn’t graduate high school are somehow inferior or stupid people.

I took it the opposite way. High schools are designed to provide a bare floor of knowledge a citizen should achieve. The top side may be extremely competitive, but the bar for passing high school is meant to be low.

Someone who can't pass that and doesn't have developmental issues likely have environmental issues to address. So having someone be exploited by the government to fight instead of improve that environment feels scummy.

[mihaaly]

'Some', 'could', 'mostly', not too strong arguments for the abolishment of generic rules applied on all.

'Some' 'could' see that the ability of jumping the requirements of education is 'mostly' coincides with a certain level of mental abilities.

'Some' smart people do not participate in organized education and 'some' graduates regardless of modest abilities, but those are never arguments for the generic population and generic rules. Probably those passing a good(!) admission test 'could' understand that still...

[Waterluvian]

One thing it means is that they’re administering the test, not a school board. That may be relevant or ripe for abuse.

[pimpampum]

The title says exactly what it is (unless it was posted with a different title before).

[Duwensatzaj]

Hope they haven’t forgotten about Project 100,000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_100,000

Another article is more explicit about exactly who isn’t joining the military anymore. https://www.military.com/daily-news/2024/01/10/army-sees-sha...

[randomdata]

Well, they did reinstate the requirement a week later, so...

https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2022/07/after-criticism-ar...

[jdksmdbtbdnmsm]

>Another article is more explicit about exactly who isn’t joining the military anymore.

The article doesn't confirm whether the total of any other groups is dropping, but it can be inferred from the numbers given that recruiting is very low across the board. It's worth having a racial remark in the title for clicks alone.

[nvm0n2]

> the drop in white recruitment has baffled Army staff and isn't easily explained by any one particular factor

... after a whole article full of explanations, none of which involve surveying white men to ask them why they don't want to sign up anymore. Classic journalism.

[Simon_ORourke]

This has all the historical overtones of McNamara's Morons [1], and those guys were far more likely to get killed or seriously injured in combat, basically because they were too dumb to process events quickly enough under pressure. While having (or not having) a high school diploma isn't necessarily a measure of intelligence, or lack thereof, it's a good enough proxy. I just hope anyone calling in an artillery strike in any future conflict can read a map first.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_100,000

[jhelphenstine]

Missing in discussions about the US military recruiting problem is a discussion of the shift away from 20 year defined benefit pensions to the “Blended Retirement System.” When such a terrific deal slides off the table, economic incentives shift accordingly.

[halJordan]

I disagree, the high 3 wasnt a good system. The difference between 2.0 and 2.5 % is minimal when you can completely lose the whole shebang at anytime for reasons that have nothing to do with your competence at any time between day 1 all the way through day 7304.

[b4ke]

They should institute a voluntary conscripted amnesty/asylum for those who entered into the country and are on immigration parole. This program could allow for retroactive application to spouses/children (no extended family transferability until completion of service contract).

There would be no need for sign-on bonus, you could add additional qualifications for g.i. benefits in the form of naturalization.

It would really be a net positive as they would be forced to assimilate into our society in a way that is a net benefit at many different layers of the civil stack. The kind of people who are willing to serve the country rather than acting as a sanctioned entitlement case would be a win/win. No?

[unnamed76ri]

Less people being willing to go fight and die in pointless wars is at least a small positive sign for society.

[bryanlarsen]

How many young men do you know without facial hair, without a tattoo and that have never tried marijuana? The army's eligible pool is very small. If they were really serious they'd relax those requirements.

And young women are kept out by the massive sexual harassment problem they haven't yet acknowledged.

[hipadev23]

If you want more recruits, you simply need to pay more.

[rahimnathwani]

I'm not sure what a high school diploma proves.

In my local school district, of students that enter high school:

- by 11th grade, ~50% meet state standards 11th grade standards for math

- by 11th grade, ~50% meet state standards 11th grade standards for English

- by 12th grade ~90% graduate

[jruohonen]

I don't know how long the service is, but wouldn't providing high school therein be a win-win, then?

[ThisIsMyAltAcct]

This article needs a 2022 tag

[sourcecodeplz]

Education trains your brain, regardless where you are getting it from. An untrained brain equals to a dumb individual who will make mistakes whatever he is doing.

[eximius]

Oh good, so we continue to exploit the uneducated for our military so they won't realize how little we actually support veterans until it's too late.

[CraigRo]

Charles Fefferman skipped high school, went to college at 13, and got his PhD in math at 19. The Maryland department of education tracked down his parents, and accused them of not sending him to his; when they found out about what he was doing, they sent him a complimentary diploma.

I'm sure the military has identified a pool of people that were excluded, but that they can use. Same with the people with tattoos

[wingspar]

U.S. Navy too https://www.military.com/daily-news/2024/01/27/no-diploma-no...

[everybodyknows]

Navy too!

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2024/01/27/no-diploma-no...

[msk-lywenn]

Similar thing in France for the CRS a while back. CRS are a special kind of police that can be dispatched anywhere quickly in big packs. They're mostly here to "handle protests". They had trouble hiring so they lowered the required test score from 10/20 to 8/20.

[paganel]

The coming obligatory mass conscription in the West will make all of this moot, anyway. The obesity pandemic will be a lot harder for many of the Western militaries to overcome, though.

[samus]

Mass conscription for what? The most dangerous bottleneck of western forces is supply of advanced weaponry, which is already taxed by the war in Ukraine. Even if these supply bottlenecks are fixed, it will continue to be a severe strain on public finances. And as you hint at, the draftees have to be trained to be more useful than being static targets. 21st century battlefields are very fast-paced and deadly and often asymmetric; all that stops an enemy from blowing up a target is air defense and missing knowledge about its precise location. The latter can be easily leaked by careless troops in a number of ways.

[LAC-Tech]

Mass conscription in the west would be disastrous for the west. This isn't the 20th century, we don't trust our institutions anymore, so militarily training the general population would end very poorly.

[CommanderData]

Looks like there's going to be another war.