Jan 30, 2024 Navy loosens enlistment requirements to attract more recruits
The United States Navy has loosened its enlistment requirements to allow for those who didn’t graduate high school or get a GED to enlist.
The decision marks the second time in about a year that the Navy has lowered its requirements. In December 2022, the Navy accepted recruits who scored low on the Armed Services Qualification Test.
Both are fairly rare steps that the other military services largely avoid or limit, even though they are all finding it increasingly difficult to attract the dwindling number of young people who can meet the military’s physical, mental and moral standards.
A recent story from The Associated Press detailed the Navy’s decision. Below is an excerpt from The Associated Press story.
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.
“We get thousands of people into our recruiting stations every year that want to join the Navy but do not have an education credential. And we just turn them away,” said Vice Adm. Rick Cheeseman, the Navy’s chief of personnel, in an interview Friday with The Associated Press.
He said that of the more than 2,400 who were turned away last year, as many as 500 of them could score high enough to get in.
He said he has already sent an order to his recruiters to start the new expanded effort, adding, “I’m hoping all my recruiters have called all 2,442 of them in the last 72 hours, and we’ll see how it goes … We’ll try to get some test takers this weekend.”
In the wake of the pandemic, the services have faced significant enlistment challenges. COVID-19 forced the military to shut down recruiting stations and they were closed out of high schools and many public fairs of events where they historically found success reaching prospective candidates.
But even as things opened up, the military struggled to compete with higher-paying businesses in the tight job market, particularly as companies began to offer the types of benefits — such as college funding — that had often made the military a popular choice.
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Those economic problems were only exacerbated by the sharp political divide in the country and young people’s fears of being killed or injured going to war.
Last fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, the Navy, Army and Air Force all failed to meet their recruitment goals, while the Marine Corps and the tiny Space Force met their targets.
To read the full story from The Associated Press, click here.
