The Cost Effectiveness of an Education Assistance Program (GI Bill) as a Recruiting Incentive Is Unknown

Gao ID: FPCD-82-12 January 26, 1982

Congress authorized the Department of Defense (DOD) to conduct the Educational Assistance Test Program to determine whether expanded educational assistance would improve enlisted recruiting levels and, if so, whether one form of the program was more successful than another. GAO reviewed the program to determine whether it provides sufficient information for Congress to determine the answers to those questions.

GAO believes that congressional action on a new bill which relies on the results of the Educational Assistance Test Program would not be warranted because the test's limited scope did not provide Congress with sufficient information. The severe recruiting problems which the services were experiencing when the bill was introduced have recently improved, reducing the urgency for immediate passage of the bill. All recruitment incentives and management tools influence an individual's decision to enlist; however, the program has provided no clear answers as to the relative cost effectiveness of each option or the relative influence each has on an enlistment decision. It has been suggested that cash bonuses could attract more new recruits, at less cost, than educational assistance. However, a Navy study suggests that educational assistance may cost nearly six times as much as an enlistment bonus program. Several problems were encountered in the implementation of the program: (1) the consistency of notifying qualified applicants of the educational assistance benefits was not assured; (2) the number of occupations covered by the test program varied substantially among the services; and (3) recruiting officials in each service believe that the advertising campaign was insufficient.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

Director: Kenneth J. Coffey Team: General Accounting Office: Federal Personnel and Compensation Division Phone: (202) 275-5140


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