The Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps

JROTC History – unofficial

Early History

The Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps 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 however, 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 – not an impressive total for a program that had existed for over two decades.

Federal backing of JROTC in this era was lukewarm, but the backing of certain secondary schools was downright frigid. Many high schools scheduled military classes and training at inconvenient and undesirable times. Some restricted JROTC instruction to the lunch hour while others gave it time in the late afternoon or early evening. Student participation and enthusiasm suffered as a result. Shortages of space and resources also plagued many units. Even so, enrollment in JROTC stood at approximately 72,000 in 1942.

During the inter-war period, there arose another high school training program that in many respects resembled JROTC. It became known as the National Defense Cadet Corps (NDCC). The main difference between the competing programs centered on the amount of support they got from the federal government. Whereas JROTC units received instructors and uniforms from the Army, NDCC programs did not. Weapons and a few training aids were about all that NDCC schools could expect in the way of material assistance. Many NDCC units wanted to join the JROTC program but couldn’t, due to a lack of funds to support JROTC expansion.

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 the NDCC than it did the JROTC. NDCC took on a second class status and never attained the degree of military acceptance enjoyed by the JROTC. This lack of acceptance was evidenced by the fact that in 1939, only 34 NDCC units were in operation - a mere 27 percent of the JROTC total.

Post-World War II

The two decades after World War II were austere ones for JROTC. From 1947 until the passage of the ROTC Vitalization Act of 1964, the Army froze JROTC growth due to funding and manpower constraints. This freeze was something of a boon to the NDCC, which did not rely on federal funding for its growth or maintenance. Seventy-five of the 109 NDCC units active in 1963 were established after the imposition of the 1947 freeze – after the schools on the JROTC waiting list (approximately 400 in 1963) concluded they had practically no chance of getting a unit.

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, despite its title, produced no officers and made no “direct contribution to military requirements.” McNamara’s 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 that $100,000 a year to administer. As a result, the FY 1964 budget contained no provision to fund JROTC, except in military high schools. Monies were reserved, however, for those JROTC schools agreeing to convert to the 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, and the Department of the Army received 90 from senators, representatives, heads of educational institutions and individual citizens. Almost all expressed disapproval of the proposed DOD action. Parents, teachers and community leaders believed that the junior ROTC program was in the national interest, 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, and its extension to both the Navy and the Air Force. During the congressional hearing on JROTC legislation, the Defense Department, 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 Defense Department commission was appointed to undertake the review. The commission surveyed a cross-section of secondary school officials, community leaders and parents, and 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 Defense Department’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 Defense Department, realizing that it could not block the expansion, wanted to guide it along the most cost-effective lines. To achieve this end, the Department of Defense commission recommended that, in the future, 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, 40 days before his assassination, 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.

To facilitate the expansion envisaged in the Vitalization Act, a new provision was added that gave incentives to high schools that hired military retirees as JROTC instructors. These retired military employees were to be paid by the school district in an amount which, when added to an instructor’s retired pay, equaled their active duty base pay plus allowances (subsistence, quarters, and uniform allowances). Furthermore, half of the cost incurred by the school district would be reimbursed by the military departments. Similar incentives were not extended to the NDCC schools and, as a result, the NDCC lost what appeal it still possessed. By 1973, only 17 NDCC units remained in operation.

President Kennedy directed Secretary McNamara to conduct a thorough study of the ROTC program for viability and cost-effectiveness before implementing the ROTC Vitalization Act. The recommendations of the Department of Defense study group charged with this task were codified in a Defense Department directive on ROTC published in 1965. The directive contained a number of provisions designed to make the program more popular among high school students and of greater value to the Army. First, it authorized advanced placement for junior cadets entering the senior ROTC program or enlisting in the armed forces. Second, it established a two-track academic curriculum with a college preparatory academic track and a technical track, which combined military with vocational instruction. Third, the directive specified that, with the exception of military high schools, the JROTC was to be completely staffed with retired military personnel. Finally, the Army was authorized a maximum of 650 units, twice as many as the other services. This gave the Army the capacity to accept both NDCC schools wishing to convert to JROTC and schools on the JROTC waiting list (some of which had been on the list since the 1930s). The Vitalization Act delivered the intended boost to JROTC. Between school year 1963-1964 and school year 1973-1974, the program grew from 294 to 646 units. Student enrollment increased from 74,421 to 110,839.

The Post-Vietnam Era, 1970-1985

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.

Unfortunately, JROTC growth proceeded in a haphazard fashion. No clear design or idea guided the expansion process. The JROTC program did not have a mission statement. Units were brought on line with a minimum of prior planning and the results clearly showed it.

Many of the program’s ills were due to inadequate staffing levels, a reflection of the low priority the Army attached to the JROTC. There was no permanent staff to select new units, supervise or inspect the cadre, or look after the resource needs of the junior division. In the Office of the DCSROTC, one full-time civilian supervised the entire operation. Some ROTC regions did not have a JROTC management cell.

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.

The Program of Instruction

From World War I through the 1970s, JROTC textbooks reflected the program’s emphasis on military training. Inter-war editions of JROTC manuals differed surprisingly little from those published in the 1960s and 1970s in their basic thrust. The 1939 edition of the junior ROTC manual, for example, contained chapters on the organization of the infantry, military sanitation, drill and command, the rifle and rifle marksmanship, scouting and patrolling, map reading, combat principles, rifle squad and musketry. An edition of the manual published some 30 years later included such topics as the characteristics and principles of military organization, small unit tactics, technique of fire of the rifle squad, tactics of the rifle squad, crew-served weapons, the 40-mm grenade launcher, the 3.5-inch rocket launcher, and the 66-mm HEAT rocket M72. Both editions could have been used as a primer in basic training.

The first significant change in the JROTC curriculum occurred in the mid-1980s with the adoption of the JROTC Improvement Plan (JRIP). The central plank in the JRIP’s program of instruction was a recommendation that at least 50 percent of the JROTC curriculum be devoted to the field of technology. The intent was to motivate high school students to become scientists and engineers, which the Army desperately needed in its officer corps, and to attract more “academically-oriented” students and schools into JROTC, which historically had been concentrated in “poor schools that did not send people to college.” The emphasis that the JRIP placed on science and technology meant that purely military training was relegated to a lesser though still prominent place in the curriculum.

Closely related to the regular JROTC program of instruction was the encampment program. In 1973, JROTC received authorization to conduct summer camps. From the very beginning, however, the Defense Department provided very limited support to summer camp training. It authorized temporary duty pay, for example, only for the JROTC cadre who directly administered the camps. Everybody else, including cadets, had to pay their own way. In 1985, TRADOC requested funds to subsidize JROTC cadet attendance at summer training. The request was denied. One reason cited for the denial was the absence of any legal authorization for JROTC camp support. The service comptrollers, into whose lap the issue fell, questioned how the Defense Department would profit from monies spent on encampments, since JROTC enrollment levels had been satisfactory for some time without the advantage of additional funds.

Attempts at Reform, 1985-1986

The rapid expansion of JROTC between 1980 and 1985 overwhelmed the management capabilities of the regions. In the First Region, for example, the number of units increased by 33 percent (225 to 298) between 1983 and 1985. In his 1984 annual assessment, Brig. Gen. Curtis F. Hoglan, First Region commander, candidly spelled out what this dramatic growth meant for the junior program in his area by stating, “A year ago, I cautioned that we were close to the straw breaking the camel’s back. We are there now in First Region. While much lip service has been given to the JROTC program and new emphasis placed on high school recruiting, I am forced to treat this area with benign neglect because the priority of our effort is to the college program directly.”