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

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

#181

Post by ben_w »

paganel wrote: post #153
petre wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you get something like the KPA (North Korean army): not very good at fighting wars but quite good at construction work. In order to have a capable military, it needs to fight wars. Hence all the countries joining the US in Afghanistan to achieve valuable on the field training. What use is a big stick, other than intimidation, when you just carry it around, not knowing how to actually use it? Future recruits will…

The drone thing is just a fantasy some of us nerds like to tell ourselves, I've seen it in some reddit subs, too. As per North Korea, they were able to come up with 1 million artillery shells for their friends the Russians, while the West couldn't do the same for their friends the Ukrainians [1], I'd say that North Korea got the better of the West here. [1] https://unn.ua/en/news/it-seems-that-north-korea-is-a-more-e…

> I'd say that North Korea got the better of the West here.

Depends what's the most important missing item on Ukraine's wish list; Ukraine did get rocket artillery, SAM systems, tanks, and a whole bunch of other stuff.

To me, it suggests that shells are something that NK knows it can spare (and the same for all the stuff everyone else collectively is providing Ukraine, it's stuff the donors know they can spare).

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

#182

Post by buran77 »

orwin wrote: post #160
Magridal wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are making an assumption that a person dropping out of school at 13 in the ~1960s would have the same education level as someone dropping out of school at 13 today, let alone that the conditions and circumstances one would find themselves in having dropped out are equivalent to the 1960s. Frankly, especially with the crumbling and cracking discipline, order, and hierarchy in the U.S. military now, you are also ma…

Do you have a source on the 'cracking discipline, order and hierarchy' of the US army? I know a 35 yo French artillery officer (now he's teaching new officers) who has worked with the US military for 15years, last year he told us that the US army is the only western army that didn't stagnate and became better, organization-wise, in the last 15 year.

That makes sense, it's one of the few armies which has been involved in one war or another, at scale, for the last several decades. Practice makes perfect. And this is probably the only way such an organization can evolve, just like a muscle will only evolve if used, and will atrophy otherwise.

I think the original reason for requesting the high-school diploma is two fold. On one hand the person can come back and pick up where they left off, with a better chance of serving society. But maybe the more important one was that it lowered the chances of teens enlisting it the pit of desperation, seeing themselves as failures, with no other way out. Those may not be the people you really want because those may not be the people who really want you. This is the kind of deal that's hard to pull out of, and the Army would probably not want to be in the situation to have a wave of desperate teens realizing they just made a rash decision. The Army also doesn't want to be drained of new recruits, so here they are, taking what's on the table. It's a clear sign that young people are sending to the Army though.

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

#183

Post by 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

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

#184

Post by cpursley »

petre wrote: post #73
hayst4ck wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neutrality is support for might makes right. Choosing to be neutral is to say that the strongest party should win. Not being prepared to be violent makes you harmless. Having the capacity for violence and choosing not to use it makes you peaceful. If you speak softly, but don't carry a big stick, then you are just speaking softly. Might might not make right, but it determines who gets to make the rules.

Then you get something like the KPA (North Korean army): not very good at fighting wars but quite good at construction work. In order to have a capable military, it needs to fight wars. Hence all the countries joining the US in Afghanistan to achieve valuable on the field training. What use is a big stick, other than intimidation, when you just carry it around, not knowing how to actually use it? Future recruits will…

Afghanistan was not really a war in the traditional sense, it was more of what is known as a policing operation. Not sure there was a lot of valuable lessons there in terms of potential high intensity conflicts with near peers.

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

#185

Post by AniseAbyss »

klipklop wrote: post #24

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 infer…

[dead]

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

#186

Post by _heimdall »

AmVess wrote: post #89
bsder wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

^ This. Schools are doing a piss-poor job of educating people. Only 20% of schools can muster a 70% proficiency score, with the vast majority being much worse. What this indicates is a startlingly large number of students are receiving an education that holds no value whatsoever. Further, as already mentioned by someone else, the military will still use its own test as a means to determine where to place a recruit.

Is the proficiency score you're talking about defined at the US level, or is the same proficiency test used by other countries as well?

A scoring system is only useful when comparing parts of the entire population. If the score is only used in the US, for example, then it's only really useful for comparing states relative to each other.

When looking at the entire population and saying US students only pass the US proficiency test 20% of the time, there's no relative comparison to look at. We could simply change the test or the scoring system if we wanted a higher or lower result in the population.

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

#187

Post by AniseAbyss »

dmoy wrote: post #109
halJordan wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Also the vast majority don't get their 20. It's like >80% leaving before 20 yrs. The bigger contributing factors to declining enlistment are: general lack of support for the military among younger people (the latest round of forever wars didn't exactly help), better options in the civilian world (especially increasing benefits on student loan suppprt), and decreasing physical fitness (the increase in obesity rates di…

People have different ideas about life. If you can get a 9-5 job that pays the bills why join the military and be deployed overseas for months on end not being a part of your family?

The civilian sector has the same problem with truck drivers and maritime shipping.

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

#188

Post by nunez »

refurb wrote: post #130
thret wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US military are notoriously underpaid. Increase the base pay, increase the long-term incentives. They're not working for tips.

They aren’t underpaid, at least not on the low end. A raw recruit (E1) gets $23,000 per year. Housing, food, work clothing and healthcare is paid for. After tax, it’s like ~$1,500 in completely discretionary income. This is why you get 19 year old new recruits buying new sports cars. They can afford it. The smart ones start socking away money while they are young. A new officer (O1) gets $43,000 per year. If they are…

I've worked with many that have retired and entered the private sector. My understanding is that they continue to make their tax-free enlisted salary (via their pension) after retirement on top of whatever they're making in their private sector job. For high-ranking officers, this can be >$100k!

Many of these folks have second homes, a small RE portfolio, and more!

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

#189

Post by unnamed76ri »

hayst4ck wrote: post #63
unnamed76ri wrote: post #4

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

Neutrality is support for might makes right. Choosing to be neutral is to say that the strongest party should win. Not being prepared to be violent makes you harmless. Having the capacity for violence and choosing not to use it makes you peaceful. If you speak softly, but don't carry a big stick, then you are just speaking softly. Might might not make right, but it determines who gets to make the rules.

US foreign policy for the second half of the 20th century was basically: "Communism is real bad and causing millions of people to suffer and die, so let's go start a war that will cause millions of people to suffer and die. Except now a lot of those people get to be our people! Hurray!"

Left alone, communism eventually fails in almost every case. China being the main exception but that's because we pump a half a trillion dollars into their economy every year buying cheap goods.

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

#190

Post by samus »

paganel wrote: post #147

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.

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.
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