The Marine Corps changes its requirements for passing officer course by reducing graded hikes

Marine Corps Times:

Faced with towering attrition rates, the Marine Corps has steadily modified its grueling Infantry Officer Course ― changes that top Marines say are not attempts to water down standards, but to more accurately replicate today’s real-world requirements.

Recent changes include the number of evaluated hikes required to pass the course, and the removal of the physically demanding Combat Endurance Test as a strict requirement to graduate.

Under the new requirements, only three of those nine hikes will be evaluated, and Marines will have to pass all three evaluated hikes in order to graduate.

The condition that Marines at IOC participate in nine hikes remains unchanged.

Under the previous rules six of those hikes were evaluated, and Marines had to pass five of those six evaluated hikes.

The Corps in recent years has struggled to meet its goals in graduating an adequate number of new infantry officers. Attrition rates reached as high as 25 percent in 2014. But since implementing the new modifications, last year the Corps hit its target for the first time since 2008, Brig. Gen. Jason Q. Bohm, the commanding officer of Marine Corps Training Command, told reporters at a roundtable discussion Friday.

The Corps argues the changes made to the hikes more accurately reflect standards outlined in the Marine Corps infantry training and readiness manual ― standards that undergo a formal evaluation every three years.
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The Corps has come under criticism regarding the notoriously grueling 13-week infantry course that so far has only seen one woman successfully graduate.

But most washouts from the IOC are men — only 35 women have attempted the course, and only five of those have attended the IOC after the job field was opened to women.
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I went through officer training during the Vietnam era and my recollection is that attrition rates were much higher than they are today.  Most of the dropouts were as a result of the inability to keep up on the hikes.  The Hill Trail in OCS could be pretty difficult for some of the candidates.  I recall one exercise where we did the trail at a fast pace and then did some exercises that were called a confidence course which was to test your ability when fatigued and under stress.

We were in teams and one of the guys on my team who must have weighed 50 pounds more than I kept falling behind and I helped him to the finish line.  At that point, he decided to drop out.  While I felt sorry for him I was also not pleased that he chose that point to quit.  But it is better to find out there than in the bush with your Marines. 

It does sound like they are carrying more weight than we did.

We also did a timed run with full "battle rattle" which turned out to be one of my better events.  I came in second in my company.  The guy who beat me was a long-legged guy from Ohio that I last saw when we were both recovering from wounds at the Bethesda Naval Hospital.