If They Can't Get Into College...

This morning NPR ran a story about military recruitment of high school students. According to the story, the National Guard landed a Black Hawk helicopter on the football field of Audubon High School in Audubon, N.J., and then transported a group of teachers to Fort Dix where they were told all about the benefits and risks of serving in the Guard. I don't know how many of these stories I've heard over the past year or so, but it's been a lot. A lot of talk about declining numbers of military recruits and a lot of debate over military recruitment in schools, particularly those launched on school and college campuses (and apparently football fields).

Some of the concern has been focused on the NCLB provision, Section 9528, that requires school districts to provide military recruiters with personal student information. Other concern, more recently, has been over the Supreme Court's unanimous decision affirming the military's right to recruit on college campuses.

With regard to NCLB, there is an "opt out" provision through FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act), which allows parents and students to request that personal information not be released (students, even under 18, can make requests too).

But still, the Defense Department has managed to develop a database of millions of 16-25 year old students to help identify potential recruits. As part of DoD's Joint Advertising, Marketing Research and Studies (JAMRS), the project collects personal information on high school and college students. According to a DoD Federal Register notice, they are collecting everything but your kid's blood type. Also good to know that the DoD is paying a nice dime to Teenage Research Unlimited (TRU), a market-research firm aimed exclusively at understanding the teen market. So they know your kid, even if you do remember to fill out that "opt out" form and turn it in to the school.

So one might argue that military enrollment is down, market research is a legit business practice, we're at war, young people should serve their country, etc. But let's be clear. The military is in direct competition with other options that young people are now more likely to choose. High school graduates are headed to college in record numbers. College students are graduating, finding jobs, or joining AmeriCorps and the Peace Corps. They are not joining the military.

The DoD knows this (see this and the many other research studies conducted by the National Academies, funded by the U.S. Marine Corps). One of the main conclusions of the 2004 study was that "The dramatic increase in college enrollment is arguably the single most significant factor affecting the environment in which military recruiting takes place." In other words, we need to do something about all those kids running off to college if we want to run an army.

Apparently, another recruitment strategy is to get mothers on board. The National Academies' research identifies mothers as "an extraordinarily important influencer in the aspirations of youth, especially for higher education" and recommends that military recruitment would be improved by increasing and targeting recruitment for parents "with particular attention to mothers". Basically, now that we're better educated (more mothers have college degrees than ever before), our kids are going to try to do the same thing (free fodder for some- if those women would just quit it with the whole "higher ed attainment" thing, we'd have all the military recruits we need).

So what's a DoD to do?

Enter new radio and TV ads aimed mostly at young men (add some rock songs too), add a few targeted campaigns to convince mom that her kid should "accelerate [his/her] life" and sprinkle in the occasional Black Hawk helicopter-on-football field stunt to get the principals and teachers engaged, and you may win the battle (if not the war).