History
The Junior
Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC) came into being with the
passage of the National Defense Act of 1916. The focus of JROTC was
on secondary schools. Under the provisions of the 1916 act, high
schools were authorized the loan of federal military equipment and the
assignment of active or retired military personnel as instructors on the
condition that they followed a prescribed course of training and
maintained a minimum enrollment of 100 students over 14 years of age.
At its inception, the
JROTC course consisted of three hours of military instruction per week for
a period of three years. Any JROTC graduate who completed this
course of military instruction was authorized a certificate of eligibility
for a reserve commission to be honored at age 21 (although this provision
was allowed to lapse after World War I as the need for reserve officers
declined). When the United States entered the conflicts in 1917,
there were few resources to spare for the JROTC program. Between 1916 and
1919, the Army established units at only 30 schools. About 45,000 students
enrolled in JROTC during the 1919-1920 school year.
Federal
support and assistance for the JROTC program was limited between the world
wars. Due to funding constraints and a lack of enthusiasm on the
part of the Army, the number of JROTC units increased only gradually
during this era. By 1939, 295 JROTC units were in operation.
Since
the supervision and funding of NDCC units rested almost entirely in the
hands of local school authorities, the Army’s ability to exert its
influence over them was tenuous. Consequently, the Army exhibited
less interest in NDCC than it did the JROTC. NDCC took on a second
class status and never attained the degree of military acceptance enjoyed
by JROTC. This lack of acceptance was evidenced by the fact that in
1939, only 34 NDCC units were in operation - a mere 27% of the JROTC
total.
When Robert S. McNamara became secretary of defense in 1961, JROTC entered a period of intense scrutiny. McNamara found that the $4.7 million needed annually to run the program and the 700 active duty personnel needed as instructors was an excessive price to pay for a program that produced no officers and made no “direct contribution to military requirements.” His solution was to convert JROTC into NDCC units. He saw the two programs performing the same mission but differing in one critical respect - cost. The entire NDCC cost less than $100,000 a year to administer. As a result, the FY 1964 budget contained no provision to fund JROTC, except in military high schools. Money were reserved for those JROTC schools agreeing to convert to NDCC.
Ironically,
McNamara’s attempt to eliminate JROTC ultimately resulted in the
program’s expansion. Shortly after McNamara’s intentions were
announced, the Department of Defense received over 300 letters and
telegrams; the Department of the Army received 90 from senators,
representatives, heads of educational institutions, and individual
citizens. Almost all expressed disapproval of the proposed action.
Parents, teachers, and community leaders believed that the junior ROTC
program was in the national interest and that it had a salutary effect on
juvenile delinquency and helped to produce potential leaders. Many
members of Congress shared their views, notably Congressman Herbert.
At the same time, JROTC supporters in the House of Representatives
introduced legislation proposing the expansion of the program from the
existing 254 to a maximum of 2,000 units. It extended to both the
Navy and the Air Force. During the congressional hearing on JROTC
legislation, the Department of Defense taken aback by the storm of
criticism which its proposal had unleashed, backtracked and requested that
it be allowed to reconsider the matter. Its reconsideration took the
form of a review of the JROTC/NDCC for the purpose of asserting the
desirability of maintaining its support for the program. The House
Subcommittee holding the hearings agreed, and an 11-member of the
Department of Defense commission was appointed to undertake the review.
The commission surveyed a cross-section of secondary school officials,
community leaders, and parents; the commission published its findings and
recommendations in a report entitled “Future Operations in the Junior
Division ROTC and the National Defense Cadet Corps,” dated June 1963.
While
the report reiterated the Department of Defense's position that
JROTC produced no officers and served no direct military purpose, it
conceded both the desirability of program expansion and the importance of
JROTC to the nation. It also admitted that the program provided the
military and the nation with certain benefits. Foremost among these
benefits was the fostering of favorable attitudes among American youth
toward military service. An important ancillary benefit, the report
went on to say, was the promotion of “good citizenship.” No part
of the curriculum during this period was specifically aimed at instilling
“good citizenship” traits in cadets, but the military training and
indoctrination received during the normal course of instruction was
believed to lead impressionable adolescents toward discipline,
orderliness, respect for authority, and other character traits conducive
to the development of law-abiding citizens.
The Department of
Defense wanted to guide it along the most cost-effective lines after
realizing that it could not block the expansion . To achieve this
end, the Department of Defense commission recommended that greater use be
made of military retirees as JROTC instructors. This would free up
700 active duty personnel for employment elsewhere and save a substantial
sum of money. At this time, enrollment in JROTC totaled just under
60,000. The commission’s assessment of the NDCC’s future was decidedly
less optimistic than the one it had given to the JROTC. The lack of
resources and general Army support for the program it was felt, were
harbingers of the NDCC’s eventual demise.
On
Oct. 13, 1963, President John F. Kennedy signed Public Law 88-647, the
ROTC Vitalization Act of 1964. The law required the services to
increase the number of JROTC programs under their jurisdiction and also
charged them to achieve a more homogeneous geographical distribution of
units across the nation. The 1916 rule mandating a minimum
enrollment of 100 U.S. citizens, ages 14 or older, was retained for the
continuation or establishment of JROTC units as were many other provisions
of the original legislation.
The
end of the Vietnam War and the elimination of the draft in the early 1970s
ushered in a new era for JROTC, and new challenges. At a time when
public esteem for the military profession was low, the Army felt compelled
to exploit more fully the junior program’s potential as a recruiting
source. Accordingly, junior cadets were authorized to enlist in the
regular Army in the advanced grades of E-2 through E-4, depending on their
performance and experience in JROTC. Qualified JROTC graduates were given
a special honors category for nomination to the United States Military
Academy. JROTC received another stimulus in July 1976, when President
Gerald Ford signed Public Law 94-361, which raised the authorized number
of JROTC units from 1,200 to 1,600. The Army received 200 of these new
units. Due to the lack of funding, however, only 20 new units were
actually brought on line before 1980.
During
this same period, women won the right to enroll in JROTC. A court ruling
in the summer of 1972 declared the exclusion of females from the JROTC to
be “discriminatory.” The first female cadets entered the program
at the beginning of school year 1972-1973. Over the next two
decades, female representation in JROTC grew steadily. By 1993, female
cadets comprised over 40 percent of the corps.
The
beginning of the 1980s witnessed another flurry of official activity
relative to JROTC. At this time the Army Recruiting Command commander,
desiring to tap the new-found enthusiasm of American adolescents for
military service, directed his subordinates to work closely with JROTC
cadre to identify recruitment prospects. This step underlined once again
the Army’s traditional view of the JROTC as a source of enlisted
recruits. In September 1980 Congress passed Public Law 96-342, which
lowered the mandatory JROTC unit enrollment level from 100 to an amount
not less than ten percent of the host institution’s enrollment, thereby
paving the way for increased institutional participation in the program.
These
measures reversed the post-Vietnam slump in program growth. By 1983,
enrollment stood at more than 5,600 above its 1974 level. These promising
results encouraged Army leaders to proceed with the expansion provided for
by Public Law 94-361. Over the next two years, 120 additional units
were brought into the JROTC fold. Enrollment experienced a
proportional increase.
The diffuseness of the JROTC management structure compounded
JROTC’s troubles. It allowed the regions to run the program in
essentially any manner they saw fit. The result was that no two regions
staffed, organized, or administered their JROTC division (if they had one)
in the same way. JROTC staffing and administration became so confused that
the Chief of Staff of the Army’s ROTC study group could not determine
the “real” staffing levels at region headquarters.
