Veronica Higuera

Enjoy your college experience, it is once in a lifetime! Many of us students tend to hear
this during our senior year of high school. What if college wasnt your option? What would be
said then? After graduation there are other options instead of college, such as finding a job,
doing an internship/ training program, going to a trade school, or joining the military. (Still
working on the introduction.)
This research is about why high school graduates join the military after graduation. The
main purpose is to find out if many students that decide to join the military are doing it because
they weren't a good candidate for college or did they have the goal of actually serving. If the
issue is not qualifying for college, was it due to the lack of information on the requirments to go
to college and do they plan to have a successful career in the military. (Expanding soon)
During my research I have found other researches that have been conducted throughout
the 1900s. I was able to discover many reasons on why students joined the military instead of
going to college. Most of these reasons were related to the lack of opportunity due to their race,
social status, and propaganda that had influenced them. Since the 1900s these reasons are still
relevant today, but also according to the NYC Department of Education the College Readiness in
2013 had been only 31.4%. In 2015 only 35% of high school students were considered College
Ready, Jeremiah Kittredge, the CEO of the pro-charter group Families for Excellent Schools,
said the numbers remind us that with two thirds of high school students failing to graduate
college ready, education in New York City is in a state of emergency. (Cite CBS.) Now
currently, Chancellor Carmen Faria is working on the expansion of college readiness to be
provided and emphasizes in more school.
Without college readiness how are students expected to simply go to college. Now this is
where the military ties in the future for many seniors. With self- exposure to becoming college
ready and going out to college fairs, there are several encounters with military recruiters. During
an interview with high school graduate of 2016, Oliver Kula, I had questioned him on his
recruitment experience and how he was able to make a decision of choosing the military instead
of going to college. I started to look into the military during a college fair, one minute I'm
searching for the ideal college, next i found myself speaking to a recruiter. I honestly didn't know
why I was even talking to them but at the same time I knew it wouldn't harm to learn more. It's
not like I really even knew what an ideal college was. Oliver was accepted and had planned to
attend Hunter College the Fall of 2016 but he stated Learning about the military and hearing
about their experiences definitely gets a person thinking I could do that. I can have a better future
within the military rather than college. Throughout the interview he assures that even if he felt

more prepared for college he would still choose the military, he believes he can be more
successful within the military.

During my research I also found stories of actual high students who state why they joined
the military. Within this small research, they had the goal and purpose of doing something
meaningful, therefore leading them to aspire to joining the military. In this research there are
three participants that joined the military due to different reasons but they all believed in the
military being a long term career. According to the Defense Department, the Air Force, Army,
Marine Corps and Navy all met or exceeded their recruiting goals in the first half of fiscal year
2012 for a total of 67,830 recruits.Probably about half of all our recruits come straight out of
high school, said Army Sgt. Silviu S. Dragu, a recruiter in Santa Rosa. ( citation) (Silow, 2012).
I was also able to find a survey that was conducted in the 1975 towards high school
seniors, they have surveyed them up to the age of thirty-five. With this survey they are trying to
find the correlation on propensity and armed forces. Throughout the source they present many
tables which allowed to have a better understanding. Concluding this research they determined,
the present findings show that the military propensities of most young people are firmly formed
by the end of high school, especially among men. Substantial majorities of those young men
expecting definitely to serve actually do so, usually enlisting within the first year or two after
graduation. (Bachman, 1998)
In another article, it was a research on why high school graduates would rather go join
the military, rather than attend college. According to the research, the reason students decide to
enlist in the military is due to education, propaganda, and/or race and socioeconomic status.
After collecting all of their data, they concluded the military is the next best thing to
college.(Kleykamp, 2006.)

Overall, with this research I can conclude that enlisting to the military after high school is
a personal decision, but overall the decisions are similar to others who enlist. I believe that
researches could be renewed every 5 years or so but in the end it all depends on the persons
situation and options. Some genuinely aspire to be part of the military like Eric Greenlee (Silow,
2012.), others like in the College, jobs, or the military? Enlistment during a time of war by
Kleykamp, enlist due to their personal situations whether it was their socioeconomic status
and/or race.

I also found stories of actual high students who state why they joined the military. I
noticed that in some surveys women were excluded or specific races were emphasized such as
the hispanics and blacks. I believe the researches should be done without any exclusions but due
to low percentages it wasnt taken any interest. I plan to address the issues mostly on the reasons
rather than who the individual is themselves. In order to approach my topic I plan to interview
both students and Military personnel, and hopefully hear experiences recruiters themselves have
heard. I plan to reach out to both the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Marine Corp., and high school
graduates of 2016. I will also try to find more recent surveys taken during the 2000s since most
of my research are from the 1900s. The purpose of the research question is to have a better
understanding on the decision students are making, and to see if they are doing it because they
possibly feel like they dont have much to offer. This topic is important to me personally because
majority of my family is in the armed forces, I am the first to go to college before enlisting. My
approach to this topic specifically is because i would like to know why others join.
References:
Bachman, J. G., Segal, D. R., Freedman-Doan, P., & O'Malley, P. M. (1998). Does enlistment
propensity predict accession? High school seniors' plans and subsequent behavior. Armed Forces
& Society, 25(1), 59-80.
Elder, G. H., Wang, L., Spence, N. J., Adkins, D. E., & Brown, T. H. (2010). Pathways to the
All-Volunteer Military. Social Science Quarterly, 91(2), 455-475.
Kleykamp, M. A. (2006). College, jobs, or the military? Enlistment during a time of war. Social
Science Quarterly, 87(2), 272-290.
Silow A.(2012, Aug 29).Why They Choose The Military. The Press Democrat. Retrieved from
http://teenlife.blogs.pressdemocrat.com/12004/why-they-chose-the-military/

-need to set up the citationhttp://schools.nyc.gov/Offices/mediarelations/NewsandSpeeches/2013-2014/CHANCEL

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https://www.google.com/amp/www.nydailynews.com/amp/new-york/education/nyc-high
-schools-increase-graduations-fail-college-readiness-article-1.2692138?client=safari