CHANGE: It’s getting much more difficult to join, or stay in, the U.S. Army. “The military is now a club that many want to join, but only few are good enough to get in.”

UPDATE: A reader emails:

As a loan guy who does mostly VA loans for active duty military members, I have seen something twice in the last 90 days that I had never seen before. Enlisted people summarily returned to civilian life with time still left on their enlistment, and without warning. One of them the day we were supposed to close on her home loan. An honorable discharge, so no harm to them, but the one commonality I saw was that they had both been “in rank” a little too long. Aside from the tighter recruiting, there is clearly an “up or out” criteria being implemented as well.

Interesting.