Recent information released by the government reveals that nearly 25% of those taking the military's entrance aptitude tests FAIL COMPLETELY to be of any use to the US Army. Since the tests are so comprehensive to aptitude across intellectual, vocational and manual tasks ... the failure rate is somewhat telling that these individuals won't serve much function anywhere else in the civilian workforce either.

There was a time when soldiers were stereotyped as representing the bottom of the barrel, with few exceptions being the dregs of society incapable of doing anything else. As far back as World War I, the military tested its members for aptitude to place them into jobs they were qualified for. Speaking to the bottom of the barrel, the test included both "alpha" and "beta" versions differentiated in that betas were illiterate, unschooled and may not have even spoken English. The modern ASVAB (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery) tests a wide scope including assembling objects, paragraph comprehension, general science, mathematics, electronics, automotive, shop skills, mechanical understanding, reasoning and vocabulary in order to determine whether a recruit can handle things like intelligence analysis, telecommunications, operate machines or be direct combat operations. Applicants must score at least in the 31st percentile to be of use and the military regularly turns away folks with high school diplomas and GEDs for their poor placement. A recent global education survey shows American high school students score 26th out of 65 countries in combined scores for math, science and reading tests.