The challenge of all challenges...

[Professor_Adam]

Troops (junior enlisted) most often won't be motivated to get their college degree unless they are ambitious and have a desire to do things like become an officer or NCO.

The reason being
(1) although it might translate into things like promotion points a troop will make far more money by getting married and having more children (BAH and BAS)
(2) its time consuming if you don't enjoy it,
(3) you can easily survive in the military without one and make a good amount of money and even retire with a full pension without ever getting one,
(4) enlisted atmosphere is many times very macho and not very education oriented,
(5) you get college credit for job training in the military (even if you don't ever get a degree)
(6) a large number of enlisted never had a desire to go to college. For those who did they would go and simply go to ROTC.

my humble opinion...

Your observations are spot on. However, in my MOS (the people I work with) you CANNOT get promoted and retire without college. For instance the cutoff score for promotion to staff sergeant as a 92F is 798 points. That means you need to have 67 SH of college to get promoted. Even with a military eval, most Soldiers in that rank will only have about 12 to 18 credits.

We have some Soldiers in our MOS throughout the Army who are still E-5's nearing retirement because they don't have two years of college credit (67 SH).