F.B.I. Plans to Lower Recruiting Standards, Alarming Agents (All you need is a MAGA hat and a GED) [View all]

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/21/us/politics/fbi-agent-recruitment-requirements-trump.html

https://archive.ph/T4exQ

F.B.I. Plans to Lower Recruiting Standards, Alarming Agents
The plan appears to be part of a broader effort to shift the agency’s focus from tracking national security threats to fighting crime.
By Devlin Barrett and Adam Goldman
Aug. 21, 2025

The Trump administration is preparing to lower the recruitment standards for F.B.I. agents, eliciting alarm from many agents who worry that the move will undermine the agency’s primary mission of conducting complex investigations and tracking threats to national security.

Under a plan pushed by the director, Kash Patel, and his deputy, Dan Bongino, the F.B.I. will start welcoming new classes of recruits who will receive less training and no longer be required to have a college degree, according to people familiar with the plan who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe it.

The shift comes as the agency anticipates losing more than 5,000 employees by September, largely as a result of agents, analysts and others taking severance or early retirement packages offered by the Trump administration to try to reduce the budget.

Instead of spending about 18 weeks training at the academy in Quantico, Va., the group of agents, tentatively scheduled to start in October, will receive eight weeks, according to the people. And the agents will no longer need to fulfill a longstanding requisite for joining the bureau: a bachelor’s degree.

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