Research for Separation

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Marine Corps Separation Rates: What's Happened Since FY 00
October 1, 2008
As the Marine Corps continues its growth toward an active-duty endstrength of 202,000, it needs to reduce the rate of separations (including end-of-active-service (EAS) and non-EAS separations) for enlisted Marines and officers. In this document, we examine separation rates over the FY00 to FY07 period and assess their patterns. We find that, despite high operational tempo, average separation rates for enlisted personnel, warrant officers, and commissioned officers were actually lower in FY07 than in FY00. There were, however, small increases in separation rates for some subgroups, including females, retirement-eligible aviators, and ground officers with 7 to 10 years of completed service. Still, the overall pattern of separation rates indicates no worrisome trend.
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Bootcamp Attrition Rates: Predictions For FY 1999
May 1, 1999
This briefing examines bootcamp attrition, including predictions for FY99 rates, subsequent fleet attrition, and the role of recruit quality. We project an FY99 Navy bootcamp attrition rate of 20 percent, up 4 percent from FY98. We found holding down bootcamp attrition did not result in increased fleet attrition for these accession cohorts, as measured by 33-month attrition rates for accessions from FY90-FY95. Finally, we observed changes in recruit quality explain only a small part of attrition increase, as measured by high school diploma graduates, AFQT, and Delayed Entry Program (DEP).
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Women at Sea: Unplanned Losses and Accession Planning
March 1, 1999
The Deputy of Chief of Naval Operations for Manpower and Personnel asked CNA to study various issues related to maintaining fleet readiness while expanding the role of women in the operating forces. First, we studied the pattern of losses of personnel from ships by gender and explored policies aimed at reducing them. Second, we updated a CNA planning model that links women's accession plans, bunk plans, and a variety of personnel policy parameters. Recommendations include maintaining a presence of female Chief Petty Officers of a least 5 percent of the female crew in order to reduce the level of unplanned losses of junior women, and increasing A-School proportion of female accessions in order to improve retention of female personnel.
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Understanding Enlisted Personnel Losses
August 1, 1998
The Personnel Readiness Division of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (J1) asked CNA to look into why people are leaving the services, particularly if there has been any change in the reasons personnel cite for leaving the services, and the quality of people who are leaving. The analyses presented here are based on the results form surveys for the Navy, Army, and Air Force. Across the services, we found evidence of increased dissatisfaction with different aspects of military compensation, including pay, advancement opportunities, and retirement benefits. But trends in retention through the first quarter of 1997 show no immediate alarms. Army trends seem to show long-term improvement, Navy data indicates that declines may be leveling off, and Air Force retention rates are erratic and reveal no real trends.
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Final Report for CNA Study on Answering Decision-Makers' Questions: Organizing Training Information for Policy Analysis
June 1, 1998
A primary tasking for this study was to build a permanent database integrating Navy recruiting, training, and manpower/personnel data which would follow recruits from street to fleet and use variables designed to capture the kinds of information needed by decision-makers. This paper summarizes our analyses and briefly describes the database. It begins with the different analyses we did of the bootcamp period, goes on to a discussion of rating attainment, and finishes with our analyses of trained sailors in the fleet. Findings and recommendations include coding separation reasons more consistently, revising the CNET monthly bootcamp attrition report, more careful screening of sailors with nonacademic course failures who are sent to the fleet, and supporting initiatives to provide a second chance at school for sailors who fail an A-school course.
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