by Sharon Early

Created on: December 13, 2010   Last Updated: December 14, 2010

If the minimum age for joining the military were raised to 21 we would have a much smaller military in fairly short order. When young people graduate from high school and begin to join the workforce or begin looking for a job and a way to move out on their own, a lot of them look at joining the military. There are a lot of teens who join the military for the sole benefit of building capital for college on the G.I. Bill. There are also those who join the military because they believe in protecting this country, by force of arms if necessary. Some people join the military and they never want to leave. My father was one of those people. He served in the US Air Force for 23 years before retiring with a full pension and a 23 year work history that qualified him for managerial positions in the private sector with starting salaries around $50-60k per year plus benefits.

If they raised the enlistment age to 21 we would see a huge reduction in the size of our military whether it was wartime or peacetime. If military were service restricted to those 21 or over, you will see more kids struggling in those formative years, many of them guided off down some other path in the three years between high school and enlistment age, especially those who cannot afford to go to college. Those who intend to go to college via the G.I. Bill would find it to be a much less viable or practical option if they had to wait three years after high school to join and get started because if they started their 4 or 5 year hitch at 21 they would be 25 or 26 before they completed the period of indenture and began their 4 year education which would put them almost at age 30 by the time they completed their degree and began their career. If you are going to take a 4 year detour through the military between high school and college it is much better to get started immediately following the completion of high school.

A lot of the people who have ended up in the military were persuaded to join the military because without the discipline, structure, and purpose that one finds in the military they were getting into trouble, committing petty crimes, or getting mixed in with the wrong crowd, so their parents or in some cases a judge or guidance counselor suggested that they enlist in the military. There are a great number of young adults who have no idea what it takes to survive on their own in the world after high school. They have no real marketable skills and prospects for employment are often bleak,

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