Marine Corps NCOs and ROTC Already Eliminating Written Exams
Changing Criteria to High School Grades and Attendance Records
The Navy, struggling with manpower supply amid a decline in military service resources, has decided not to hold written exams when selecting non-commissioned officer candidates.
According to the Navy on the 6th, starting with the 286th class of Navy non-commissioned officer candidates commissioned in March next year, candidates will be selected based on high school grades and attendance records without taking written exams. The intention is to reduce the exam burden and increase the number of applicants for non-commissioned officer candidates.
According to the Navy, the selection rate for non-commissioned officers has been decreasing over the past three years, from 89% in 2021 to 87% in 2022, and 62% in 2023. The selection rate refers to the ratio of selected candidates compared to the planned number; for example, if 100 candidates were planned to be selected last year, only 62 were actually selected.
A Navy official said, "This is a system improvement to select non-commissioned officers suitable for the Navy in a challenging manpower acquisition environment," adding, "We judged that good talent can be selected based on high school grades and attendance records without imposing the burden of preparing for exams such as language logic and data interpretation."
On November 24 last year, a new non-commissioned officer is taking an oath at the '281st Non-Commissioned Officer Candidate Commissioning Ceremony' held at the Navy Education Command's Hokuk Hall (gymnasium) in Jinhae-gu, Changwon-si, Gyeongnam. On this day, the Navy produced 122 elite non-commissioned officers to protect the nation's maritime territory. [Image source=Yonhap News]
The Navy is not the only branch to eliminate written exams for officer selection to facilitate smooth manpower recruitment. The Army Cadet Military School has also removed written exams for selecting Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) candidates starting this year. The ROTC competition rate dropped from 4.8 to 1 in 2015 to 2.4 to 1 in 2022, and fell further to about 1.6 to 1 last year.
The Marine Corps also eliminated written exams starting with the 406th class of non-commissioned officer candidates commissioned in August this year. In the Marine Corps, only 14 candidates entered the training unit in October last year as the 403rd class of non-commissioned officer candidates.
Although the number of recruits varies depending on the time of year due to multiple selection rounds annually, this is a significant decrease compared to the 82 candidates of the 398th class who entered around the same time in late September 2022.
A Marine Corps official said, "We eliminated the written exam to reduce the burden on applicants and to sufficiently select capable resources."
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