Analysis of the Navy's Increased Cap on Accessions of Non-High-School-Diploma Graduates in FY99

Abstract : In FY98, the Navy failed to meet its enlisted recruiting goal by 7,000 recruits, or 12 percent. Early in FY99, it appeared that the recruiting difficulties would continue. All of the military services were facing a tight recruiting market because of such factors as low unemployment, a decreased propensity of youth to enlist, and increasing college enrollments. The Secretary of the Navy responded in February 1999 by increasing the cap on the recruitment of non-high school diploma graduates (NHSDGs) from 5 to 10 percent of enlisted accessions. Although NHSDGs are less costly to recruit than high-school-diploma graduates (HSDGs), both in terms of recruiter time and in marketing, the military services limit the number of NHSDG recruits because they have much higher attrition than overall recruit survival, it initiated the following two programs; Navy recruiting modified the Compensatory Screening Model (CSM), the screen used to determine NHSG eligibility-the new screen, called the High Performance Predictor Profile (HP3), was implemented with new contacts during February 1999; and the Commander, Navy Education and Training (CNET) developed a 1-week course for NHSDG recruits called Academic Capacity Enhancement (ACE), which began in March 1999, discontinued during the summer surge, and returned as a fully revised course in October 1999. Commander, Navy Recruiting Command (CNRC) asked CNA to analyze (a) the survival of NHSDGs under these two new policies and (b) the overall cost-effectiveness of the policy to increase the cap on NHSDG accessions. This annotated briefing presents our findings.