Search Results

Author: Cancian, Matthew Franklin
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Cancian, Matthew Franklin
Klein, Michael W.
Military Officer Aptitude in the All-Volunteer Force
Armed Forces and Society 44,2 (April 2018): 219-237.
Also: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0095327X17695223
Cohort(s): NLSY79, NLSY97
Publisher: Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces & Society
Keyword(s): Aptitude; Armed Forces Qualifications Test (AFQT); College Graduates; Military Personnel

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

We show a statistically significant and quantitatively meaningful decline in the aptitude of commissioned officers in the Marine Corp from 1980 to 2014 as measured by their scores on the General Classification Test. This result contrasts with the widely studied increase in the quality of enlisted personnel since 1973 when conscription ended. As a possible cause for this decline, we focus on the fact that, during this period, Marine officers had to have a 4-year college degree and there has been an expansion of the pool of young Americans in college. To corroborate this hypothesis, we show that there has been a similar decline in scores on the Armed Forces Qualification Test for responders to the 1979 and 1997 National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth among college graduates but not for the overall set of respondents.
Bibliography Citation
Cancian, Matthew Franklin and Michael W. Klein. "Military Officer Aptitude in the All-Volunteer Force." Armed Forces and Society 44,2 (April 2018): 219-237.