High School Diploma No Longer Required for Army

The Army said Tuesday it has begun accepting more recruits who have not finished high school, a concession to an enlistment market that has tightened even as the number of inductees the Army needs has grown.

Besides lowering the standard on high school graduates, the Army is offering a range of new financial and other incentives to attract recruits, said Lt. Gen. Frederick Vollrath, the Army’s chief personnel officer.

Vollrath said publicity about a rash of sexual harassment allegations in the Army, combined with controversy over “Gulf War syndrome,” has hurt recruiting. But he said the effects could not be measured with precision.

More important, in the Army’s view, are the difficulties that recruiters face in luring young people away from opportunities in business and higher education.

Preliminary figures for the first four months of the 1997 budget year (October 1996-January 1997) show the Army has scored lowest among the services on two of the three major yardsticks by which recruit quality is measured.

In that four-month period, 90% of the Army’s recruits were holders of high school diplomas, compared with 91% for the Navy, 94% for the Marines and 99% for the Air Force.

The Army also has suffered a drop-off in aptitude test scores. Its goal is to have no more than 2% of its recruits from the lowest aptitude test category, but that climbed to 4% in the first four months of the budget year. The other services have done better.