Arguments that are Guaranteed to Irritate People…
By Tom Ricks is not going to be a popular man this morning:
Want to trim the federal budget and improve the military at the same time? Shut down West Point, Annapolis and the Air Force Academy, and use some of the savings to expand ROTC scholarships.
After covering the U.S. military for nearly two decades, I’ve concluded that graduates of the service academies don’t stand out compared to other officers. Yet producing them is more than twice as expensive as taking in graduates of civilian schools ($300,000 per West Point product vs. $130,000 for ROTC student). On top of the economic advantage, I’ve been told by some commanders that they prefer officers who come out of ROTC programs, because they tend to be better educated and less cynical about the military.
The idea of a two-tiered (three tiered, at least, when you count OCS) officer training system has always struck me as a bit odd. If, as Ricks suggests, there’s minimal payoff in terms of performance, then I could consider getting on board. I suspect that the services have some data on that, although assessment would run into a few methodological problems. Ricks also suggests closing down the service war colleges. I’m less willing to climb onto that bus; the service colleges have issues, but the curriculum is much different than what you find in civilian graduate programs, and the faculty is allowed to work on policy-oriented topics that aren’t well supported in the rest of academia.