Army Draws Fewer High-Quality Recruits

For the third consecutive year, the Army missed benchmarks for education standards among new recruits in 2007. The service would like to attract 90 percent of new recruits with high school diplomas; studies show that better educated new soldiers are more likely to complete their first enlistments. In 2006, 73.1 percent of all Army recruits held diplomas; in 2005, the figure was 83.5 percent. The decline is a 20-year low. The figures were released by the National Priorities Project, a Northampton, Mass.-based independent research group that focuses on the use of taxpayers’ money. Complete recruiting statistics are available at http://www.nationalpriorities.org/militaryrecruiting2007 on the group’s Web site. The group attributes the decline to the war in Iraq.