This Naval Academy Professor thinks so,
With the rise after World War II of the Reserve Officer Training Corps programs at universities around the country, the academies now produce 20 percent or less of the officers in each service, at an average cost to taxpayers of nearly half a million dollars per student, more than four times what an R.O.T.C.-trained officer costs.
The institutions are set on doing things their own way, yet I know of nobody in the Navy or other services who would argue that graduates of Annapolis or West Point are, as a group, better than those who become officers through other programs. A student can go to a civilian school like Vanderbilt, major in art history (which we don’t offer), have the usual college social experience and nightlife (which we forbid), be commissioned through R.O.T.C. — and apparently be just as good an officer as a Naval Academy product.
Instead of better officers, the academies produce burned-out midshipmen and cadets. They come to us thinking they’ve entered a military Camelot, and find a maze of petty rules with no visible future application. These rules are applied inconsistently by the administration, and tend to change when a new superintendent is appointed every few years. The students quickly see through assurances that “people die if you do X” (like, “leave mold on your shower curtain,” a favorite claim of one recent administrator). We’re a military Disneyland, beloved by tourists but disillusioning to the young people who came hoping to make a difference.
Read the full Op-Ed here.
As a graduate of a service Academy I sympathize with the professor, it seems that not only do service academies produce burnt-out cadets, but often professors as well.
However, the problems he describes are not new ones, they’ve been happening at all the institutions for years now and debated thoroughly among cadets, midshipmen and faculty.
In fact, I’ve often wondered if many of these issues haven’t always existed in some form, inherent in the design of the system itself, but soon forgotten by former grads who are quick to assure you that “things were different when I went through…back when it was hard.”
In a somewhat paradoxical twist, elite academic institutions by their nature are often prone to the very thing they preach so adamantly against – mediocrity.
Here’s William Deresiewicz, a former Yale professor writing in 2008,
In short, the way students are treated in college trains them for the social position they will occupy once they get out. At schools like Cleveland State, they’re being trained for positions somewhere in the middle of the class system, in the depths of one bureaucracy or another. They’re being conditioned for lives with few second chances, no extensions, little support, narrow opportunity—lives of subordination, supervision, and control, lives of deadlines, not guidelines. At places like Yale, of course, it’s the reverse. The elite like to think of themselves as belonging to a meritocracy, but that’s true only up to a point. Getting through the gate is very difficult, but once you’re in, there’s almost nothing you can do to get kicked out. Not the most abject academic failure, not the most heinous act of plagiarism, not even threatening a fellow student with bodily harm—I’ve heard of all three—will get you expelled. The feeling is that, by gosh, it just wouldn’t be fair—in other words, the self-protectiveness of the old-boy network, even if it now includes girls. Elite schools nurture excellence, but they also nurture what a former Yale graduate student I know calls “entitled mediocrity.” A is the mark of excellence; A- is the mark of entitled mediocrity. It’s another one of those metaphors, not so much a grade as a promise. It means, don’t worry, we’ll take care of you. You may not be all that good, but you’re good enough.
Now, there are plenty of differences between Yale and the Naval Academy, but I draw the parallel simply to point out that the “march toward mediocrity” is not something unique to the service academies.
Where people are likely to get agitated is that, unlike other schools, the taxpayer is paying for the education of cadets and midshipmen. Like any good stockholder they should always be asking, “where’s the value?” Why spend half a million per cadet if they’re no better at the end of it then an ROTC or OTS grad?
At this point I’m not sure that I have much of an answer. I’m glad that I went to USAFA for many reasons and certainly feel that I received a top-notch education, however can I say that I’m better than I would have been had I gone a different route? Who knows the answers to questions like that? Not me.
So my friends, many of you reading this were classmates of mine at USAFA, what do you think? Did going to the Academy make you a better officer than if you had gone to a school like Vanderbilt?
Popularity: 2% [?]
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
I didn’t go to the Academy, so I’m not going to comment on that aspect…merely my observations. After seeing 6 graduating classes at the AFA, I can tell you Cameron that the caliber and quality of character for the cadets that I’ve encountered is by far superior to other institutions. Now I think what the Academys are good at is taking really good students and refining them. Now while, I’ve know several who are really great students…I also know that the opposite is true. Thus it seems to me that the bad get worse and the good get better in these types of environments. However, is the cost worth it? Well what’s the return on the investment? Once discharged are officers making an impact on society, government, and culture? How would you measure that?
My problem with the academies is in the concentration of huge amounts of critical resources, especially when an overwhelming majority of your leadership is coming from other pipelines. (In the case of the AF – 80% from OTS and ROTC.)
The academy silos should be exploded and those resources distributed- staff, teachers, equipment, dollars, scholarships.
@ Justin,
Good input – I agree that as with most things in life we create our own reality in a sense, you get as much from a school as you put into it. With all the resources available to the Academies there is a huge opportunity for anyone to grow incredibly as a person, but many choose to sit in their dorm rooms and play HALO. Garbage in, garbage out.
As for how to measure the return on investment it’s a great question. Some might say how many make a full career (20yrs) would be a good measure, but what’s troubling is that Academy grads statistically (at least lately) get out of the military sooner then their ROTC and OTS peers. Burn-out? Better opportunities in the civilian sector? Probably all of the above.
@ Shlok,
You highlight a trend I see coming in education in general, but it’s certainly more prevalent in the case of the Academies. The brick-and-mortar part of education is becoming far less important with the rapid sharing of high-quality education on the internet. The walls are coming down around some of the most closed off institutions. You can go to iTunes U and download thousands of Ivy League lectures for free.
I think what the Academies should be aiming for if they really want to regain some differentiation is to create critical/maverick thinkers more interested in smartly challenging the status quo rather than silently joining the cogs of bureaucracy.
Unfortunately many of those wanting to challenge norms get it “disciplined” out of them while at the Academy. Of course I’m not talking rebellion for the sake of rebellion, but we’re in desperate need of some John Boyd-like thinkers who are more focused on doing something rather than being someone.
As Deresiewicz pointed out, we need fewer hoop jumpers and more deep thinkers. If the Academies can’t move in that direction I fear their days may be numbered.
@ Shlok,
Of course, does anything I just mentioned require $500,000 per cadet to accomplish, highly doubtful – so your point remains….
The Academy (i’ll just talk about the AFA since it’s what I know) provides some very important and difficult to replace things for the Air Force. First of all, think of how many division 1 athletes come into the officer corps every year because of the Academy. (Not to mention all the people who were recruited to play sports at the academy, but didn’t end up playing all four years…you and me
). It may sound silly, but I think this is a very imoportant group of people. Division 1 athletes provide a competitive spirit, work ethic, great physical fitness and an edge that is hard to duplicate. I’m not sure on this, but my assumption is that there are far fewer division 1 ROTC athletes, and virtually no OTS. Also, I think the Academy generally produces officers with better physical fitness than the average OTS or ROTC program…don’t believe me, just look back at ASBC or in your squadron for personal examples. My personal experience and others who I’ve talked to supports this generalization. Fitness = money and mission effectiveness.
Second, look at the awesome publicity that the academy produces for the AF…ok before I get laughed off the blog for saying that, just understand that bad news about academy scandals isn’t neccessarily as damning to the AF as we might think… A lot of rational people look at these scandals and see the media just trying to be ridiculous and liberal and hype things up as much as they can.
The academies are a respected symbol of the forces they represent. How many people have been exposed to the air force watching the falcons compete on the national stage in football and basketball? Lots. And the commentators always have such awesome (often funny to we who attended) things to say about these young men and women who “while their peers partied last summer, he participated in COMBAT SURVIVAL TRAINING!” The Academy is colorado’s number 1 man-made tourist attraction. How many kids dreamed of becoming pilots after visiting the academy…I know guys in my pilot training class who grew up dreaming to attend the academy, but didn’t get accepted after high school. They pursued their dream through ROTC, and now contribute greatly to the AF. They might not have been inclined to join the AF if the academy hadn’t planted the seed in their hearts when they were little kids.
I think the academy does far more than just providing 1,000 officers to the air force per year. (Though it does that extrememly well, in my opinion).
It is a symbolic figure of sorts, the type of thing the nation can take pride in. How much it costs as opposed to what is gained is difficult to measure for the reasons I mentioned above and many others. As a side note, I visited our old prof in the mgt dept last weekend while at a wedding in California, RM, and he definitely feels the academy produces a high caliber officer that is worth the AF’s investment…only reason I mention it is because he is really, really smart.
I posted this on my website, but I want to keep the conversation happening here….
Back in my cadet days, I asked the then Secretary of the Air Force, James Roche, if the other commissioning sources produced as good of officers as the Academy, why were we spending so much money on such a relatively small program.
He gave two reasons, in my own words and commentary:
1. The public expects the Air Force to have an Academy, based on the tradition of West Point and Annapolis. It serves as one of the major recruiting tenants for the military, for both officers and enlisted.
2. The Academy leads Air Force policy. The current USAF Core Values, adopted in 1997, of Integrity First, Service Before Self, and Excellence in All We Do, were birthed at USAFA in 1994. The highlighting of sexual assault at the Academy brought an Air Force (and I think, entire DoD) wide Sexual Assault Response Coordinator (SARC) at every base. The Academy becomes the Think Tank to generate new ideas and Research Lab to test things out before the wider adoption into the wider Air Force.
I hated that answer and spent the next few weeks spreading it in disgust. (We didn’t like Roche very much then, anyhow.) It still bothers me, but I think he is right in why we have the Academy. It doesn’t really cover if it is worth the return.
The public wants to have an image of what the military looks like. And that image cannot be the image that Roche himself portrayed, you know? So they have the Academies, where everyone there is close enough from the spectator stands to look like the perfect image of what the military should look like. The ridiculous parade uniforms, with the tapered waists and super broad shoulders. Throw in a photoshopped picture of a fighter (or use images from a flyby), and you have a third of the images you see when you search for the Academy. Add the chapel and you get double points.
They’ve done a great job, marketing wise, to convince the public that cadets=jets=Air Force, though we all know that is not the reality. But doing so, they have created a brand that sticks out in people’s mind. And it is a very positive image. I think that is why there is so much backlash whenever there is a new scandal. The public does see the Academy (or the military) as a representation of themselves–no, cadets are different. So when they behave like everyone else, something must be wrong.
So, $500,000/cadet is the current price tag being thrown around? It wasn’t too long ago that it was $350,000. Where do these numbers come from? But let’s say that the numbers are right and each year the Air Force spends $580 million on cadets (directly, with the value of their education–it’s hard to find straight numbers on the Academy’s operating budget). That’s 25% of Coca-Cola’s advertising budget. I know it only takes in account one service academy, but still. If you take the entire $663.8 billion DoD budget, it is less than 0.09%.
Obviously, this is still very, very serious money. But when it looks so small in proportion to how ridiculous our spending is elsewhere, there is not going to be a whole lot of change. Nobody wants to be the guy that took away the Academy, when the public generally loves it. Especially when there are crappy reports that don’t mean anything like this (http://www.usafa.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123185348), and everyone uses it for validation and cred.
Is it worth it? I really do not know.
@ Colin and Lance,
I’m all for having division I athletes in the military, but I think using that as a justification for having an academy is a bit weak. I’m not convinced there’s any correlation between the quality of an officer and whether or not they were a great athlete in school. Being physically fit and being an athlete are two totally different things and for the average Air Force member neither mean much unless you’re a combat controller or pj.
On your other two points though I think that you and Lance are on to something – the symbolic value of the Academy. At the end of the day no one can really prove the institution makes better officers, but we all sure look pretty in our uniforms and the grass is extremely green.
The public loves the aura of the Academies, the tradition, the pomp and circumstance, the flyovers at the football games. It’s almost like the Academy is to the military service what the Wailing Wall or Dome of the Rock is to the religious faithful.
I say all of this a bit tongue and cheek of course because I have many great memories from the Academy and am glad I went there, but one has to wonder how much of the value is simply symbolic.
I wonder, too, if part of the symbolic value is the whole “discipline” thing. Most people are fascinated by it, because we have so little of it in our lives. It’s why people watch the Biggest Loser and marvel. Once discipline is added to a life, it becomes worth watching.
Hence, the zoo and the people lining the walls.
Haha, sorry Cam, I can’t resist an opportunity to poke the old T-ZO gap fire every now and then, just for old times sake… I wouldn’t really try to build my case on the point about D-1 athletes, though I maintain the opinion it’s an overall plus.
Lance, good observation on discipline.
I’m with Lance. I think the academies are about more than just pumping out officers. They are centers for military-focused education and training. There are a number of academic conferences, grant and research opportunities, and military training events hosted by the academies (that a number of ROTC cadets attend by the way) which otherwise wouldn’t exist at a civilian university. Bottom line, we should be measuring academies by more than just the number and quality of officers produced, though in my personal experience and subjective opinion, academy grads tend to be highly capable leaders and performers.
You could replace some of what the service academies do in terms of what Karl and Lance discuss by creating a set of grad school programs at some of America’s better private and public schools that bring together the military expertise with compatible civilian fields (moving somewhat towards an academic embrace of Tom Barnett’s “Sys-Admin” concept that major contractors are already digging into). The grant and research opportunities and conferences in particular could be replicated by elite schools willing to create military science/national security studies departments (something UNC, VA Tech and Univ. Of Miami (to take three schools I have fairly good institutional knowledge and experience with one way or another) would be very eager to do if given the funding).
Anecdotally, I never got the impression in 5 years of working with aviation, engineering, and operations officers in the Navy that Academy grads were better than ROTC types… generally the impression was that generally Chiefs were the best leaders, the Mustangs (prior-enlisted officers) were the best “operators” and the other officers just existed as normal cogs in the machine. It could be different from a Marine, Army, or AF perspective, but I doubt the difference is great enough to warrant the money and resources spent on the service academies.
This is money that arguably would be better spent on either (a) greater in-service education for officers, especially grad school opportunities and (b) better support of ROTC programs. For those who consider this money a drop in the bucket, consider that we disgracefully are still nowhere near the level of family support we should be at for deployed service members, something far too many Academy grads in charge of various fiefdoms within the military (and in gov’t agencies or legislative positions after they retire) have been more than willing to do very little about compared to the attention and time they spend on showing support for their Academy in the athletic or intellectual arenas.