By GI Korea on March 21st, 2008 at 2:24 am

College Students Stressed While Soldiers Re-Enlist in Record Numbers

• LT Nixon
  10:32 pm on March 20th, 2008 1

  This one kind of surprised me. I was wondering the same thing. I think college kids are prone to actually "wanting" to be victims.

• ChickenHead
  4:27 am on March 21st, 2008 2

  GI… you are kidding, right?

  One of the re-enlistment charts you posted has been manipulated to show an outcome different than reality… and the other reaches an entirely different conclusion.

  The first chart shows a nice upward trend… but that is only because two data points betweent the first and last points are missing. Inclusion of these data points, if accurately graphed, represent the top of a bell curve with a dip in the middle.

  As if this wasn't enough, the bar graph also gives the impression of an upward trend by graphing the middle bar as 65,000 rather than the actual point of 69,512 which would make it look the same as the 69,777 next to it… once again, not a rising trend.

  Come on, GI, a graph is worthless if the points are incorrectly graphed to demonstrate a pre-determined conclusion.

  It's not news, it's Fox News.

  Let the stinking, left-wing hippies keep the monopoly on this kind of statistical manipulation… as it not only reduces your credibility in the other 99% of the cases where you are right but it represents a much more dangerous trend of "lying to yourself"… which will lose the Iraq war faster than anything the enemy can do… and does no service for the military which needs to recognize and solve any problems which might be causing an actual reduction in re-enlistments.

  The other chart shows a high re-enlistment percentage-of-goal only because the goal is ~16% less than it was back in '95… which is interesting because the real numbers of re-enlistment took a nosedive right around 9/11… despide a growing military.

  Graph actual re-enlistments vs. actual number of enlisted while ignoring artificial goals to get a true picture.

  Also, the goal (or "mission") numbers for re-enlistments looks just a tad bit like they were manufactured to fit what re-enlistments would be… to maintain a hundred-plus percent of re-enlistments.

  Lowering expectations sure is an easy way to reduce failure.

  If I was an officer in today's military, I would make the re-enlistment goal as ONE! Then I could show a 69,000% re-enlistment-over-goal, get a promotion and stick the next guy with the task of trying to demonstrate an upward trend on a PowerPoint graph for the next fiscal year.

  A half-a-soldier for a stunning 140 thousand percent increase over goal, perhaps? Heh.

  Come on, GI.

• GI Korea
  9:57 am on March 21st, 2008 3

  Chickenhead the bar graph correctly shows that since the Iraq War an increasing amount of soldiers have been re-enlisting. I provided the additional graph so everyone can look at the raw numbers for themselves.

  Through personal experience getting soldiers to re-enlist the biggest reason for the increase is the bonuses being offered to soldiers. Usually units have a surge of re-enlistments during deployments because the soldiers receive their bonus totally tax free. This is a huge incentive to re-enlist while deployed.

  The re-enlistments is what has been saving the Army in regards to recruiting because if these guys were not staying in it would mean the recruiters would have to recruit more and recruiters are about at their breaking point right now.

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