Shut Out of the Military

More than 1 in 5 high school graduates is not academically qualified for Army enlistment, according to a December 2010 report by Education Trust. The report provides public analysis of data from the Army’s Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, a basic military aptitude entrance exam.

The ASVAB assesses abilities for the full gamut of jobs in the military. Since these jobs closely resemble jobs available in the civilian workforce, it is likely that those who fail to meet the requirements of the ASVAB are also unprepared for the civilian workforce, according to the report.

The report also finds that minority applicants fared worse on the tests than their white peers and offers a state-by-state breakdown of ineligibility rates by race. Overall, the rate of ineligibility for Hispanic and African American candidates was 29 percent and 39 percent, respectively. Comparatively, 16 percent of white test-takers scored below the minimum score required by the Army. When minority candidates did pass, they often did so with lower scores than those of their white peers.

The data are from 350,000 high school graduates aged 17- to 20-years-old who took the ASVAB between 2004 and 2009 to qualify for enlistment in the Army.

Read the report (pdf).