Project 2025 Would Make All Public High School Students Take Military Entrance Exam?

In September 2024, a rumor spread on social media (archived) that Project 2025 — a conservative coalition’s plan for a future Republican administration — “proposes that every one public highschool college students must be required to take the army entrance examination.”

The rumor additionally unfold on-line in August 2024. One Threads put up read: “Do you know that Mission 2025 would require that every one public highschool college students take the ASVAB examination for entrance into the army? Non-public faculty college students can be exempt. I can not think about why…”

The paragraph concerning the army examination, discovered between pages 102-103, said that to “rescue recruiting and retention,” a “wanted reform” was to require completion of the ASVAB examination by college students attending faculties receiving federal funding (emphasis in daring ours):

Enhance army recruiters’ entry to secondary faculties and require completion of the Armed Providers Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB)—the army entrance examination—by all college students in faculties that obtain federal funding.

A footnote to the paragraph redirected to a document (additionally obtainable here) with the title, “The Administration and Congress Should Act Now to Counter the Worsening Army Recruiting Disaster,” authored by Thomas W. Spoehr. Equally to the Mission 2025 doc “Mandate for Management 2025: The Conservative Promise,” it learn:

Congress ought to:

[…]

Think about laws enhancing army recruiter entry to secondary faculties and to require completion of the ASVAB Profession Exploration Program (CEP) by all college students in faculties that obtain federal funding;

Whereas the ASVAB is targeted on army enlistment, the ASVAB Career Exploration Program, talked about above, is geared towards broader profession exploration, together with however not restricted to army careers.

The Armed Providers Vocational Aptitude Battery, as its official web site read, is “a multiple-aptitude battery that measures developed skills and helps predict future educational and occupational success within the army. It’s administered yearly to multiple million army candidates, highschool, and post-secondary college students.”

Moreover, a candidate’s scores on the ASVAB decide their eligibility for enlistment within the U.S. army. “Everybody who desires to enlist within the army should take the Armed Providers Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB). Every department units its personal minimal rating to affix. Your rating will assist determine which jobs you are able to do after you enlist,” USA.gov web site explained.

Nevertheless, because the army.com web site underscored, one isn’t ever required to affix the army after taking the ASVAB examination:

If I take the ASVAB, am I dedicated to becoming a member of the army?

Taking the ASVAB doesn’t commit you to something, however a army recruiter could contact you. The ASVAB may help you establish your individual pursuits and aptitude, even if you’re not planning to enter the army or are undecided. It will possibly show you how to select programs for faculty and make your private profession selections.

We not too long ago fact-checked different Mission 2025-related rumors, resembling:

Sources