![]() ![]() ![]() military? The GCT dates back to World War II, when it was developed to help classify incoming servicemen. So what exactly is the GCT, and how are the scores used by the U.S. The General Classification Test (GCT) from World War II to present day So are today’s officers up to the task? In new research, Brookings’ Michael Klein and Tufts University’s Matthew Cancian-a former Marine officer who served in Afghanistan-take a closer look at this question and uncover a troubling pattern.Īfter analyzing test scores of 46,000 officers who took the Marine Corps’ required General Classification Test (GCT), Klein and Cancian find that the quality of officers in the Marines, as measured by those test scores, has steadily and significantly declined over the last 34 years. Decades later, at the height of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, 60 percent of new enlisted recruits met the high quality standard.īut what about military officers? Though commissioned officers comprise only about 16 percent of the force, they clearly have a major impact on the success of the military as a whole given their leadership role for their troops and responsibility for strategy and tactics. In 1977, 27.1 percent of new enlisted recruits met the military’s standard for being “high quality,” meaning that they possessed a high school diploma and above-average intelligence relative to the U.S. When the United States ended the draft and transitioned to an all-volunteer military in 1973, there was concern about who would join and whether the transition would negatively impact the quality of the force, which many suspected it would.Īs it turns out, the quality of the force as a whole actually increased over time. ![]()
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