Lowered Recruiting Standards

An organization that has always had strict standards about who is allowed in their ranks has suddenly decided become more lenient about who it recruits.

The most frequent reason for this change of policy is a need for more members. If the organization is combating some rival group or other force, then extra numbers, even as cannon fodder, become extremely valuable.

This change in policy is also most frequently how our main character becomes a member of said group when before that the best they could have hoped for was to fanboy from afar. This decision is also often a cause of friction between the those who support the new arrangement and the Old Guard who resent the "riffraff" coming into their midst.

This trope is specific to when an organization changes to rules to allow more people to join, as opposed to situations for the elite organization making a special exception for an especially talented individual who otherwise wouldn't have been able to join.

Examples:

Anime & Manga
  • In The World God Only Knows lack of numbers is the reason that a third class devil like Elsie gets trained and sent to Earth to capture loose spirits; a job previously reserved for the best of the best. To elaborate, there was massive numbers of runaway spirits that escaped hell realm and invading human realm 10 years prior. To counter this, the hell realm government recruits as many as possible.

  • In Area 88, the Asran foreign legion is desperate for fighting men, so it tends to overlook flaws in potential mercenaries, such as inexperience, criminal backgrounds, or psychopathology. They're not too concerned about lack of consent (in Shin's case) or age (in Kim's case) either.

Film
  • This trope is the premise behind the original Police Academy movie. The mayor instituted the policy, and a resentful chief of police cooks up a plan to make the new cadets so miserable they quit.
  • In The Bourne Legacy, a character reveals that his IQ score was raised 12 points by a recruiter so the recruiter could make his quota.

Literature
  • Monstrous Regiment, by virtue of the fact that there was hardly anybody left to recruit by the time of the story.
  • Happens in Under the Dome by Stephen King. After the town is cut-off from the outside world via Some Kind of Force Field, the town's leaders make the decision to deputize some young adults in order to beef up the police force. These young adults? The town selectman's sociopathic son and his delinquent friends.
  • The Manticorian Navy in Honor Harrington has been quietly lowering its standards with regards to re-enlistees in preparation for the war with Haven, resulting in troublemakers like Randy Steilman being kept in the service.
  • In the Harry Potter series, Harry is accepted in the advanced Potions class because the new teacher has lower standards than Snape's. Unlike most examples on this page, however, it's implied Snape's admittance requirements were too high (demanding the Wizarding equivalent of an A on the exam).
  • Harry Dresden, title character of The Dresden Files is recruited into the Wardens and made regional commander for the central United States due to their shorthandedness during the vampire war.
  • In The Helmsman Saga, before the First Galactic War, only nobles were accepted into the Helmsman Academy. The protagonist is from the first batch of commoners to be allowed in due to the combat losses.
  • In The Wheel of Time, the Aes Sedai (magic-user) policy of only admitting young girls as trainees is relaxed a little to admit the prodigy Nynaeve, and then abandoned altogether (along with restrictions on minimum magical strength) after Egwene becomes the Amyrlin Seat.
  • In Harry Turtledove's Worldwar series, Sam Yeager is a player for a Triple-I League Baseball team. During the Great War, he tried to join the Army but was rejected on the basis of having lost all his teeth during the Spanish Flu. After the Race attacks the US (and many other nations), the Army quickly lowers its standards and starts accepting anyone who's willing to fight. Sam and his manager "Mutt" Daniels (who would normally be too old to fight) join up.
  • The Star Wars Expanded Universe: The Empire began supplementing its clone army with recruits, a development which drew criticism from the clones. As this policy eventually gave us the Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy, the clones probably had a point.
  • Mentioned in All Quiet on the Western Front: towards the end of the war, younger and younger recruits are being sent to the front with even less training than the protagonists' group received. They comment that they seem so much older now than those kids.
  • In The Stormlight Archive, the war against the Parshendi has been a sufficient drain on the humans' manpower that ten-year old boys are being conscripted.

Live-Action TV
  • All in the Family: Archie's lodge is in trouble for not having any black or Jewish members. So he suggests that they invite one black to join - Solomon Jackson. And one Jew - also Solomon Jackson. At the end of the episode Jackson accepts their invitation to join, and promises to invite all his black friends and all his Jewish friends to join too.
  • M*A*S*H - With the draft on, you get doctors who are against the very war that's being fought.
    • A recurring theme in M*A*S*H was that the vast majority of the US Army (being draftees), were unprepared, unfit, and generally had no business being in a warzone

Professional Wrestling
  • From professional wrestling, you have the nWo (New World Order) of the WCW. This was one of the things that soured the storyline, causing the eventual implosion of the WCW.

Tabletop Games
  • In Twilight 2000 by the time the game starts in 2000 all the armies in Europe have been taking anyone they can get for years: draftees, left-overs from destroyed allied units, deserters from the other side, even locals.

Video Games
  • In the Sith Warrior storyline of Star Wars: The Old Republic, your initial mentor comments that this policy recently put into practice within the Sith Academy, due to the heavy losses of the war. In an inversion, your character is one of the elite who is there legitimately (sort of—in a sort-of ironic inversion, your mentor gives you special treatment while trying to prove his point about the lowered standards), while The Rival is one whose presence owes itself to the Lowered Standards.
    • The Sith Inquisitor Player Character is also one of the Lowered Standards (as your Overseer and rival constantly point out), but doesn't stay that way for long.
  • Happens in some of the StarCraft novels. A lot of terran recruits are convincts, so the methods used involve arresting people for flimsy reasons, as well. In at least one case, people were outright kidnapped from colonies, using the brainwashing meant to keep the more violent convicts under control to instead tell them a fake story.

Western Animation
  • Justice League does it, when they go Unlimited, resulting in the recruitment of oddballs who have to be expelled later, like the Huntress.
  • On The Simpsons, NASA decides to let an average person be an astronaut to better its image, which is how Homer ends up on the space shuttle.
  • Family Guy's Peter Griffin is named president of a cigarette company for the same reason.
  • In the South Park episode "Best Friends Forever" Kenny dies and ascends to Heaven in order to command Heaven's army against the forces of Hell. He is told by the angels that they used to only let Mormons into Heaven, but they started to let others in order to increase their army's size.
  • In the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012) episode "Pulverizer Returns", it is revealed that the Foot Clan has invoked this trope, due to many of the former members quitting after losing to the turtles so often.

Real Life
  • There have been feminists who demand that the standards to becoming a firefighter be lowered so that more women can join, prompting massive protests from women who measured up to the original standards.
  • In a similar vein, the "against" camp in the debate on whether or not to allow women into the combat branches of the US Military uses this trope as one of their primary arguments.
    • This happened when the US military was eager to swell its ranks during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Waivers became more common for people with non-violent criminal histories, overweight and out of shape recruits became more common, and accordingly reports of injuries to soldiers unaccustomed to the harsh lifestyle and crimes (petty and otherwise) skyrocketed.
  • The Waffen SS during World War II. Initially membership was open to "Aryans" only in accordance with the racial policies of the Nazi state, but the rules were partially relaxed in 1940, and Adolf Hitler authorized the formation of units composed largely or solely of foreign volunteers and conscripts as the war went on. By the end of the war, non-Germans made up more than 50 percent of the Waffen SS.
  • Conscription has this effect on armies. The army is forced to accept many barely fit recruits who don't want to be in it either.
  • Jokingly mentioned by Dave Barry in regards to universities being so desperate for students they now accept people they wouldn't have allowed to work in the boiler room.
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