Has DoD Dropped Standards Too Low Just to Make Recruiting Goals?

Recruits are like a box of chocolate. You really often don't know what you've got until they are on board. Especially with 18/19 year olds

I wonder when the DOD is going to try to improve manning numbers at the exit door rather than at the entrance door.

As others have said standards change to meet recruiting goals. During the Iraq surge years we were waivering felonies and granting commissions to people who didn’t even have degrees. I’d say standards as high as they’ve ever been in the last two decades. I left the Army in 2000 and the misconduct was just as bad. I remember we had a kid get kicked out of the 75th because while on a training exercise in Germany he got drunk and ran a car into some tank barriers. I remember my old PA telling me that when he was in the mechanized infantry in the 90s his squad leader would do lines of coke off the Bradley in the field.
Now we have more prohibitions against certain types of misconduct than we did before. For instance, the Lautenberg Amendment prevents people with domestic violence convictions from carrying guns, so DV is now a permanent disqualifier. Back around 2013 the military added any conviction of sexual assault as a permanent disqualifier as well. Hard to believe, but 10 years ago you could be in the Army if you had a previous sexual assault conviction.