How did student deferment policy change after the 1969 draft lottery and through the early 1970s?
Executive summary
The 1969 draft lottery overhauled how men were selected for induction but did not immediately abolish college student deferments; undergraduate II‑S deferments largely survived the lottery even as graduate and other deferments were curtailed, and a series of executive and congressional actions through 1970–71 progressively narrowed and then ended many forms of student protection against the draft [1] [2] [3]. By the early 1970s the combination of reduced troop requirements, tighter rules on deferments, and explicit legislative changes—culminating in the end of freshman deferments and stricter local‑board scrutiny—meant staying in college no longer guaranteed long shelter from induction [2] [4] [5].
1. The lottery changed selection but kept undergraduate deferments intact
The December 1, 1969 lottery replaced the old local‑priority selection system with a nationally televised random ordering of birth dates that determined call priority for 1970, but it did not eliminate the longstanding II‑S undergraduate student deferment that allowed full‑time students to postpone induction [1] [2] [6]. Multiple contemporaneous and retrospective accounts emphasize that the lottery was meant to reduce perceived unfairness in selection, not to immediately strip students of deferment status, and early implementation kept undergraduate deferments as a central feature of the system [2] [7].
2. Graduate deferments and many occupational exemptions were already being whittled away
Policy changes preceding and surrounding the lottery had already narrowed deferment categories: the 1967 revisions cut many graduate‑school deferments and limited other exemptions, reflecting reform pressure to reduce class‑biased avoidances of service [3] [8]. That legislative momentum carried into the Nixon administration, which pushed the draft toward greater uniformity and away from the patchwork of local exemptions that had advantaged wealthier or better‑connected registrants [8] [7].
3. 1970 reforms and orders tightened the window of vulnerability and eliminated some deferments
Following the lottery, a series of executive orders and administrative moves in 1970 accelerated the narrowing of non‑student deferments and shortened how long a registrant stayed in top priority—reducing the practical protections that deferments had provided and removing many occupational and family exemptions [2] [5]. These changes shifted the balance toward a system where a man spent only a limited time in first priority and thereafter slid down the call sequence, which made the calendar year of vulnerability more central than indefinite deferment status [5] [2].
4. Freshman deferments ended and upperclassmen protections were constrained in 1971
The trend culminated in formal legislative changes by 1971 that eliminated freshman II‑S deferments for incoming classes—class of 1975 freshmen and subsequent cohorts were classed I‑A rather than II‑S—while allowing older students to keep deferments only if they could demonstrate satisfactory full‑time progress to local boards, tightening local scrutiny and reducing the college “safe harbor” [4]. That change reflected both political pressure to equalize the burden of conscription and administrative moves to make student status less of an automatic shield [4] [2].
5. Outcome and contested legacy: partial protection to rapid erosion
The practical effect from late 1969 through the early 1970s was a gradual erosion of student deferment as a reliable lifelong escape hatch: undergraduate deferments remained at first but were increasingly time‑limited, subject to verification, and stripped for new cohorts, even as declining induction rates and troop withdrawals reduced actual drafting for many; critics argued reform was overdue because the old deferment regime disproportionately spared the middle‑ and upper‑class while hitting lower‑income men hardest [6] [9] [2]. Sources record both the formal retention of undergraduate deferments immediately after the lottery and the rapid legislative and executive follow‑through that narrowed and eventually ended many deferment protections, leaving a complex policy arc rather than a single abrupt abolition [1] [2] [4].