Sagging applications at the nation’s military academies and declining enrollments in ROTC on civilian campuses could mean a future shortage of officers and complicate U.S. use of force abroad.
Added to lackluster enlisted recruiting, the numbers don’t bode well for a country with ongoing military commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan. In May, the Army missed its recruiting target by 25 percent – the fourth straight month it’s happened. Also, the Army Reserve missed its target by 20 percent, and the Army National Guard by 24 percent. Recruiting for Navy, Marine and Air Force reserves also are down. Although the Army exceeded its goal for June by 500 recruits, it’s still 7,800 short of the 80,000 new enlistees needed for the fiscal year.
For officers, the prospect that 80 percent of West Pointers and similar numbers of ROTC grads will serve in combat zones is surely a factor in declining applications.
West Point graduated 911 this year; applications were down 9.3 percent. The decline was 20 percent at the Naval Academy and 23 percent at the Air Force Academy. Reserve and National Guard units are missing their enrollment quotas, too.
Army college-level ROTC enrollment last year was off 8 percent at 26,575, according to Paul Kotakis of the Army’s Cadet Command at Fort Monroe, Va. Still, ROTC expects to commission 4,200 Army lieutenants this fiscal year, exceeding a quota of 3,900.
Air Force ROTC enrollment is off about 10 percent from the 2002-03 school year, and Navy ROTC about 1.4 percent lower over the past two school years, according to a Washington Post report.
Free education at a top-rated school doesn’t seem to be as powerful a draw as it once was. An education at the Air Force Academy, for example, costs $359,833 per cadet, paid by the government. Also, some ROTC cadets and midshipmen can get four-year scholarships at civilian colleges and universities.
Academy applications and ROTC enrollments spiked in an apparent patriotic surge in the first couple years after Sept. 11, and some spokesmen, like the Air Force Academy’s Meade Warthen, say applications are more than adequate to meet needs. “People who work this on a day-to-day basis don’t have an explanation (for the decrease),” he said. “It would be pure speculation on our part.”
Kotakis said it’s “not possible to quantify … [to say] it increased this year based on patriotism or decreased this year because of the potential of being in harm’s way.”
But Michael T. Corgan, a Boston University professor and graduate of the Naval Academy, gave a blunter assessment to the Boston Globe: “Parents, in particular, are simply not encouraging their children to go into the military service because, for many, this means an immediate posting to Iraq or at least to forces in that region.”
What’s worrisome is if the numbers keep falling, the armed forces could be short of qualified leaders – not this year or next, but a decade from now.
