A lottery can be designed that, without becoming too complicated, permits a young man some freedom of choice in the year that he chooses to serve. Such freedom of choice should be equally available to all young men.
One workable arrangement would be to call young men in their twenty-first year in an order of call determined by lottery, but with the lottery taking place in the young man's nineteenth year. At age nineteen a young man would have a good idea of the likelihood of his being called two years later, and could anticipate his service by electing to be drafted at age nineteen or twenty. A longer period of choice might have the unhealthful effect of inducing young men to speculate unduly on changes in the prospects for war and peace or even for changes in the draft law.
Young men high in the priority of call would be on notice that two years' service probably awaited them at age twenty-one and a strict denial of dependency exemption at age twenty-one would not then involve significant hardship. This arrangement would substantially eliminate the issue of college-student deferment: and it would benefit the college student by letting him know at age nineteen the likelihood that he would be called at twenty-one, so that he could make his own choice whether to complete college before or after military service.
X: If Deferments Continue ...
If, contrary to what we believe best, college students are deferred and others not, college students should become, upon graduation, equally vulnerable to the draft along with younger men who are not deferred. Exceptions should be made only for medical students, officer candidates, and others whose choice of career makes them more liable to military service, not less liable, than others.
If college students are not permitted and they should not be permitted--to avoid eventual liability for military service, the supply of eligible young men will exceed the military demand for them about as much as if nobody were deferred. Thus the need remains for a randomized selection process to determine who shall serve.
XI: Reform Pay Structure
The pay structure of the armed services should be continually rationalized to improve efficiency, to provide stronger incentives to remain in service and thus to reduce training costs and to preserve the skills created by both experience and training, to achieve the best allocations of skills and qualities among and within the services, and to avoid wasting military manpower on jobs that civilians or civilian contractors can do.
XII: Keep Current Standards
Increased pay, along the lines we recommend, should increase the number of men who enlist under the present physical and mental standards. There is a natural tendency, and a commendable one, for the armed services to want the highest quality personnel they can get; and with higher pay they would be able, and might be tempted, to raise standards of acceptance rather than to admit a larger number of enlistees.
In order, however, to reduce reliance on the draft and to spread the opportunities for service as widely