Reply #27: 2 factors here are being conflated, one is the draft, the other is contracting out.

[JVS]

Without the draft, there is a narrower band of people who enter the military. At the top end this keeps out most of the people who would have sought academic deferrals in the past. They have plans and these often don't involve the military. Some of these guys you can lure back in with ROTC to pay for education. But for lots of Americans with good prospects, the military just isn't tempting. The other side of the coin is that you also no longer get the influx of the general population that led Robert McNamara to try to make some use of the least qualified candidates with his Project 100,000 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_100,000 . So you end up with a narrower band.

The effect of contracting is that it allows the military to be more selective in what it does with the smaller band of people who are applicants rather than draftees. In the movie Patton, there is a line about being able to not have to tell your grandchildren that you spent the war shoveling shit in Louisiana. There are a lot less shit shoveling jobs now. Without contracted support the military might very well need to lower standards to regain the people to do that work, but since they have support they can keep standards from falling.