Lowering Standards

When the Army can't enlist enough soldiers, what does it do?  It lowers standards:

The Pentagon is planning a change that will allow applicants to use calculators on the military's entrance exam -- a timed test that gauges academic aptitude and dictates what jobs in the military, if any, they are qualified for, three defense officials told Military.com.

The change in the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, or ASVAB, could help relieve an ongoing recruiting slump, which is attributed to many young Americans not scoring high enough to qualify for enlistment. It would also put the ASVAB on par with how test-taking has evolved in the past decade, with calculators being widely used in math classes and on college entrance exams such as the ACT and SAT.

"We are taking a systematic approach, which will assess the impact of calculator use, and we are developing a way forward for calculator inclusion," one Pentagon official told Military.com...

The shortfalls are due to an amalgamation of issues -- but at the forefront is a shrinking pool of qualified young Americans, 17- to 24-year-olds, who are eligible to enlist. Many of those applicants are being turned away due to poor performance on the military's aptitude exam.

And criminal records.  And obesity. And drug use.  And...

Back in my day, back in the 80s, if the needed more soldiers, it just accepted a a couple more percentage points of "Category 4" enlistees.  Category 4:

Two principal Department of Defense (DOD) quality benchmarks apply to NPS recruits. The first quality benchmark is the percentage of NPS enlistees who are high school diploma graduates (HSDG). The second quality benchmark is the percentage of scores above average on the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT Categories I-IIIA).  Since FY1993, the DOD’s quality benchmarks for
recruit quality have stipulated that at least 90% of NPS enlistees must be high school diploma graduates, and at least 60% must score above average on the AFQT...DOD regulations require that no more than 4% of an annual enlistment cohort may be Category IV (10th-30th percentile on the AFQT).

The Army recognized they were Category 4, knowing it might take longer to get and keep them in shape.  It didn't lower the physical standards that categorized them.

But that seems like what the Dept of Defense is doing now, lowering the standard.