If you’re looking to join the Army National Guard to earn a little cash for college, make sure that your acne is all cleared up before you apply. The National Guard is in the process of tightening its standards, ensuring that only the best and the brightest of applicants make it to the ranks. That means if you suffer from this common skin condition or have too many speeding tickets, you might be disqualified.

The Guard has been under pressure from the Pentagon to trim its ranks, and the Army has responded by making it harder for potential troops to enlist. The National Guard is comprised of part-time soldiers who are normally called into action during disasters at home, like Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. In recent years, however, these units have been sent on long combat tours in Iraq, which are normally reserved for active-duty Army members. This does not make for a positive public relations campaign on the home front.

There are suspicions inside and out of the Guard that these application restrictions are an effort to quietly shift the responsibility of fighting overseas back on to active-duty soldiers. In fact, the Army is on the look-out for 70,000 more soldiers, while the National Guard has scaled back its numbers by 9,000 troops.

Under the Guard’s new restrictions, the maximum enlistment age was lowered from 42 to 35 years old. The Guard has stopped forgiving applicants for offenses such as theft, assault, driving under the influence, and chronic lawbreaking. They have also stopped issuing medical waivers for health problems like food allergies and a small bout with acne. The most important restriction of all is the Guard’s budget cuts. Back in 2006, most recruits received $20,000 just for signing up. Today, only a small percentage of recruits are eligible to receive any amount of money at all.

While the regular Army is growing, the National Guard seems to be shrinking. This is proving to be a source of frustration for people who want to serve their country, but are being turned away for such offenses as having one traffic ticket too many. In May, the Guard accepted 3,026 troops, compared with 5,311 in May 2008. The Guard neglected to comment on how many people applied.

John Pike, the director of the military think-tank, Globalsecurity.org, told Yahoo News that the government is trying to reduce its dependency on the National Guard in the Iraq war. “They used the Guard a lot more than they had planned several times in Iraq just because that was all they had,” he said. “They’re increasing the active component end strength in order to avoid that in the future.”

However, it seems like the toughening standards may have backfired. In June and July, the Guard neglected to meet its recruiting goals, thanks to a tougher admissions process and the increasing amount of bloodshed in Afghanistan. Despite this news, the future for hopeful recruits does not look promising. By September, the Guard still intends to release 1,400 recruits from duty. Once the fiscal year begins in October, the Guard stands to lose an addition $200 million for recruiting and retention.

Cutting-edge advertising techniques, such as joining forces with NASCAR, had once kept the Guard strong. Now that funding has been cut and standards are being tightened, what will be the future of the National Guard?