Careful With That Ax, Eugene!

John Kerry managed to (once again) put the Democratic Party's foot in its own mouth with his recent comments about education and military service in Iraq. Yet, is there a kernel of truth here that is just too ugly for the American public? Sometimes the truth really can hurt—recognizing it, that is.

Was Kerry onto something?

The popular consensus on fiery political blogs and among those in the Cable entertainment-news industry, is that Kerry was claiming the military is less educated than the civilian population. Whether this was the foundation of his comment or not, it should be easy enough to prove or disprove.

After a couple hours of research I came to find that in fact the military does appear to outclass the civilian population when it comes to education.

According to the conservative analyst firm The Heritage Foundation, "98 percent of all enlisted recruits who enter the military have an education level of high school graduate or higher, compared to the national aver­age of 75 percent" [source].

Demographics published by the United States Air Force less than three months ago indicate: "99.9 percent of the enlisted (Air Force) force have at least a high school education; 73.3 percent have some semester hours toward a college degree; 16.2 percent have an associate's degree or equivalent semester hours; 4.7 percent have a bachelor's degree; 0.7 percent have a master's degree and .01 percent have a professional or doctorate degree" [source].

But why are these figures so contrary to my intuition and to the demographic information my own senses have gathered? After all, and as I once read, 100% of statistics are made up.

The answer, it seems to me, lies not with the demographics themselves but with the statistical framing from which they are gathered. After all, 100% of apartment dwellers not issued eviction notices pay a monthly rent.

A better question to ask might be, "Are college graduates and post-graduates more likely or less likely to enlist in the military?" That is to say, do we see the more educated populace gravitating toward higher-paying and less dangerous jobs than military service, as Kerry suggested? (It is entertaining to see how the GOP has turned his comments into an attack on the military instead of seeing it as encouraging academic achievement. Would they prefer a nation of soldiers to a nation of scholars? The answer seems obvious.)

Here we've hit on it. We've arrived at the underlying reason why The Heritage Foundation statistics are specious.

It isn't whether the military is more educated than its civilian counterpart—after all, the armed services take great pains to educate their workforce and provide funding for their education. The real question is whether education (as Kerry said) leads people toward or away from military service. Is the relationship direct or inverse?

The relationship is, clearly, inverse.

Look no further than The Heritage Foundation's own report as it attempts to expound the economic benefits of military recruitment in rural areas: "Rural areas generally offer a less flexible, thinner job market. The military extends job opportunities into these areas, with technical training that is usually unavailable otherwise" [source].

Within a "less flexible, thinner job market" (like that which faces those with less education), military service offers an appealing and viable alternative to working in the service sector of society—a sector rarely glorified on the silver screen or praised by politicians. No one would dispute that job opportunities expand as educational achievement increases, and even conservative statistical sources draw an inverse relationship between these expanded opportunities and military service.

So, why is everyone so angry?