PD, I'm going by the DOD stats, not the recruiter's info - I wouldn't trust a recruiter if they told me I was a short plump blonde chick
I'm also going by message boards and seeing the kind of things possible recruits are being denied entry on. As you guys know, CT almost didn't get in due to a broken arm with a plate. Bad credit, ANY criminal record, admitted hard drug use, ANY medical problems, etc are ALL automatic DQ's and require a waiver. Many are NOT getting the waivers. Those who are getting in have up to a year before boot camp. CT's enlistment was finally done in 1/04 and he's not going in until tomorrow (yes, I'm weepy...). And that's going in as electronic general aptitude. Had he waited on a specific job, it could have been months longer. IMHO, releasing some of the restrictions and shipping out faster would put more in the active forces right off the bat. Of course, the option of going to jail or the military is LONG gone.
As far as education, I'm not sure how it is in YOUR neck of the woods, but here, college enrollments can't take any more. Due to the lottery funded college tuition program, a 3.0 and an 1100 SAT score is almost mandatory to get into UGA. It used to be if you could sign your name, you got into UGA. They aren't building more colleges around here, but from elementary to high school the kids are crammed into classroom trailers. Those kids are going to need to go SOMEWHERE. But the bottom line is less blacks enroll in college than whites and asians. Again, I'm basing a lot of this on what happens here and we have a large black demographic. At UGA, they decided not enough blacks were enrolling so they actively recruited them. The number applying actually went DOWN. I know that sounds horribly prejudicial, but I'm just looking at the hard numbers.
I just don't see a draft happening anytime soon, and if it does, it will meet with a LOT of resistance. But I've been wrong before
