Officer Recruitment For the All-Volunteer Force: Trends and Prospects

Abstract

This article examines officer recruiting policies in the U. S. armed forces during the 1970s and assesses recruiting prospects in the 1980s. Incremental policy adjustments in ROTC and other accession programs enabled the services to meet quantitative goals during the past decade. Officer accessions improved in quality, and the services refined procedures in recruitment of minority and female officers. Expansion of the ROTC scholarship programs is expected to provide further gains in quality during the 1980s. The officer recruiting system does not display any pronounced bias toward any geographic regions. Further, the major recruiting source, ROTC, is firmly based at civilian educational institutions of average and above-average quality.