Applications to Service Academies Plummet Amid Recruitment and Pandemic Woes
19 Aug 2022
Military.com | By Thomas Novelly
Applications to the service academies dropped significantly this past year -- ranging from 10% to nearly 30% -- as the military continues to grapple with recruitment woes amid a national dip in college enrollment across the country during the COVID-19 pandemic.
This past year, 8,393 people applied to be a part of the Air Force Academy's class of 2026, a 28% drop from the year before. Officials point to strict COVID-19 rules across the country that didn't allow them to host or attend many in-person recruiting events to drum up interest.
"A lot of schools did not allow us access to a lot of gatherings and a lot of conferences. ... A lot of those things were canceled," Col. Arthur Wayne Primas Jr., the academy's director of admissions, told Military.com in an interview. "So we really had to shift for the class of 2026 onto a virtual platform."
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2022/08/19/applications-service-academies-plummet-amid-recruitment-and-pandemic-woes.html
