Ain’t got no diploma! Navy lowers education requirements for enlistment no longer requiring high school graduation as military struggles with recruiting amid woke policy push

The U.S. Navy has lowered educational requirements and is beginning to enlist people who have not completed high school.

Those joining the ranks are not required to have a general education development credential — marking the second time in about a year that the service has opened the door to lower-performing recruits as it struggles to meet recruitment goals.

The decision follows a measure in December 2022 to bring in a larger number of recruits who score very low on the qualification test for the armed forces.

Both are relatively rare moves that the other military services are largely avoiding or limiting, even as they all find it increasingly difficult to attract the dwindling number of young people who can meet the military’s physical, mental and moral standards.

Under the new plan, Navy recruits can join without a degree as long as they score 50 or higher on the qualification test, which is out of 99.

The last time the agency hired individuals without educational records was in 2000.

“We get thousands of people coming to our recruiting stations every year who want to join the Navy but don’t have a teaching credential. And we’re just turning them away,” Vice Adm. Rick Cheeseman, Navy chief of staff, said Friday.

“We get thousands of people coming to our recruiting stations every year who want to join the Navy but don’t have a teaching credential. And we just send them away.’

Last year, the Navy’s recruitment goal was 37,700, but the service brought in only 31,834 people. This year, Cheeseman said, he set the goal higher: 40,600.

The total size of the Navy for 2024 is set at 337,800.

The United States also entered 2024 with its smallest military in more than eighty years and faces one of its “greatest challenges” as it tries to boost recruitment of Generation Z, Pentagon officials said.

Under the annual $886 billion defense bill passed by Congress this week, the total number of active-duty troops will drop to 1,284,500 this year.

That’s the lowest number since before the U.S. entered World War II in 1941 and officials said there should be a “national call to service.”

Cheeseman added, “I need these sailors. So it’s a stretch goal. We tell our recruiters to go get 40,600 people to join the Navy. We don’t expect to get that many. But we’re going for it.’

The other services have largely rejected such changes.

The Navy is the only service that will hire someone who is considered a category four recruit, meaning they scored 30 or less on the qualification test.

The agency expanded the number of category four recruits, arguing that some jobs — such as cook or boatswain’s mate — don’t require an overall high test score, as long as they meet job standards.

The Army takes only the lowest scoring candidates to their so-called Future Soldier Prep Course, which gives them weeks of instruction and the opportunity to increase their score to earn a rank and enlist.

The Navy allows low-scoring recruits to complete the Future Sailor Prep Course, but does not require a higher score to enlist.

In addition, the Army and Marine Corps require a high school diploma or GED equivalent, and the Air Force said it will only accept recruits without a degree if they score a 65 or higher on the qualification test.

Those numbers are very small: Only 110 of the nearly 26,900 Air Force recruits brought in last year had a GED or no education diploma at all.

Other services express concerns that underperforming recruits are more likely to drop out of boot camp or could cause more disciplinary problems down the line.

Cheeseman said he believes the biggest risk is that they will fail at a higher percentage of boot camps, but he said the difference so far has not been significant for the low-scoring recruits brought in last year.

Overall, 11.4% of these recruits did not complete boot camp, compared to less than 6.5% of high-scoring sailors.

He said Navy leaders had been talking for some time about opening enlistments to those without a high school diploma in an effort to expand the pool of potential sailors.

“We finally decided, OK, let’s go. My argument for accepting that risk is that we have the capacity for bootcamping. We don’t fill the seats. So I’m willing to take a risk.’

This comes in the wake of the Navy’s decision to hire a drag artist as a digital ambassador.

Yeoman 2nd Class Joshua Kelley, whose stage name is Harpy Daniels, announced on TikTok in November 2022 that he would be the Navy’s first “digital ambassador,” highlighting his journey from performing aboard ship starting in 2018 to becoming an “advocate ‘ for those who were ‘oppressed in the service for years’.

Kelley, who identifies as non-binary, was one of only five active-duty sailors who participated as “digital ambassadors” for the Navy in its “efforts to reach a broad range of potential candidates.”

None of the digital ambassadors were paid, the spokesperson said, and no promotional or recruitment materials featuring the ambassadors exist.

Kelley said that years before he joined the Navy, he started dressing in drag and performing in shows, inspired by the queens of RuPaul’s Drag Race, which he started watching at age 16.

The officer insists he never experienced harassment in the Navy, but when he was scheduled to perform at a diversity, equity and inclusion event at Langley Joint Air Force Base in the summer of 2022, it caused an uproar among many conservatives and Christian extremists. ‘