Hasta La Service Academies
Tom Ricks at Washington Post recommends closing the service academies, for better buck bang in officer production. Makes a couple of interesting points, but also misses a couple:
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.
This is no knock on the academies’ graduates. They are crackerjack smart and dedicated to national service. They remind me of the best of the Ivy League, but too often they’re getting community-college educations. Although West Point’s history and social science departments provided much intellectual firepower in rethinking the U.S. approach to Iraq, most of West Point’s faculty lacks doctorates. Why not send young people to more rigorous institutions on full scholarships, and then, upon graduation, give them a military education at a short-term military school?
Well, for starters, some of the finest universities in the country not only don’t have ROTC programs, they actively disparage them.
We should also consider closing the services’ war colleges, where colonels supposedly learn strategic thinking. These institutions strike me as second-rate. If we want to open the minds of rising officers and prepare them for top command, we should send them to civilian schools where their assumptions will be challenged, and where they will interact with diplomats and executives, not to a service institution where they can reinforce their biases while getting in afternoon golf games. Just ask David Petraeus, a Princeton PhD.
There’s a lot to be said for mainstreaming the military into American society, but that’s a two-way street. The American academic mainstream would need to do its part, and it has farther to go than the military. Brown and Harvard universities as noted in the linked examples not only lack ROTC, but have long histories of actively disparaging the programs and discouraging student involvement.
I doubt eliminating institutions that are dedicated to military thought and science necessarily ought to be part of any mainstreaming, however. If there are academic problems, redesign the service academy programs.
As Ricks suggests, there is a long tradition in the military of tension between service academy grads, ROTC grads and prior enlisted ”mustangs” who came up from the ranks. The officers I know include people whose academic careers often include a combination of civilian and service academy or war college education, and are sophisticated thinkers. More so in some cases than a lot of professionals I’ve encountered outside military circles. The great news is, the US military’s officer corps is not only highly diverse in its educational background, it is also highly educated, as advanced degrees in both civilian and military colleges is essential for advancement. It would also appear to be an increasingly vocal, free-thinking officer corps, as we’ve seen from op-eds and online activity, now influencing their superiors, as has been documented at venues such as Small Wars Journal.
I’d add that the criticism of a lack of PhDs among service academy instructors, who are often drawn from the experienced, educated officer corps, is presented without enough information to really know whether it is a problem or perhaps even a benefit. There are a lot of doctoral wankers out there, you know. Especially in civilian universities.
Abu Muqawama with more thoughts on the subject. Neptunus Lex and Joyner with some of the same abovementioned thoughts and a lot of others.
Lefty Yglesias thinks it’s a great idea to have future military elites trained along side the civilian elites of tomorrow. Apparently unaware the elitists won’t have them. Here’s an idea. How about the elite instititutions encouraging more of its elites to join the elitest … those who serve.
Welcome Instapundit, etal. Always good to see you. We’re celebrating Patriots Day, America’s greatest least known holiday. Commemorates the Hope, and Change, by force of arms. Combat embeds, hot again? And some related reading from the Korengal Valley.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 11:05 am Comments (17) on Sunday, April 19, 2009
17 Responses to “Hasta La Service Academies”
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April 19th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
I’ve known a great many PhDs in my lifetime, so that whenever anyone starts knocking someone for not having a PhD, I immediately lose interest in the conversation.
April 19th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
To me, this is typical Ricks. I can’t understand all the adulation he gets. I’ve read him for years and never found him to be a particularly deep thinker – although on occasion he is a good writer. With Ricks I’ve never been able to shake the sense that his positions and arguments come from whoever was the last uniformed military person he talked to over a beer. (That’s just my gut talking. Don’t mind it….)
This call to eliminate the military academies comes out about every 10 years or so and gets shoved back down for some very good reasons (and some bad ones too). In 1994-95 I was in the Secretary of Defense’s office dealing with exactly these topics. We had reams of studies on this issue. Ricks could have pulled any of them off the shelf for the counter-argument which his article fails to consider at all. Perhaps he was afraid of having his “assumptions challenged.”
But the service academies need to be retained, – and I say this as an Army ROTC product.
Let’s start with one chesnut – that the academies don’t have many PhDs on staff and therefore the cadets and midshipmen are being shortchanged. First, all the academies are independently acredited and therefore meet at least minimum thresholds for PhDs on staff. In the case of West Point and Annapolis, by the Commission on Higher Education of the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools. The Air Force Academy is accredited by The North Central Association of Colleges and Schools. if these agencies did not find the schools met standards (one measurement of which is PhDs on staff) then they wouldn’t be accredited. So using Ricks’ own argument, if they’re getting a “community college education” at the adacemies – then they are getting the same at the Ivies and the Stanfords and Emorys too, because these are the same independent agenices that accredit those schools.
But this is a red herring. In the “prestigious universities” very few courses are actually taught the whole semester (if at all) by the PhDs. Instead, you get graduate students teaching the courses for their boss (the PhD) in the last bastion of indentured servitude in the free world. In other words, even at the elite schools it is a debatable point that military students would be any better off than in today’s academies. It is also a safe bet that the more elite the school, the less the PhD is actually in the classroom since they are off doing something “more important” than teaching such as research or writing for publication.
But also Ricks is flat out wrong when he bemoans the lack of PhDs on staff. It depends on the academy. At Navy, there are a lot of civilian PhDs on staff across all departments. At Air Force, some departments are stronger than others (notably engineering) and at West Point the same, although I notice Ricks correctly notes history and social sciences are better represented intellectually than some other deaprtments. But this is no different than anywhere else in academia and Ricks completely avoids a consideration of such, taking it as a given that PhDs are the teachers across the board at civilian institutions.
Wrong.
He also takes a slap at the senior service colleges. Well, I am also a graduate of the Naval War College where I earned my second Masters degree after picking one up at one of those civilian institutions Ricks so highly prizes. I can tell you that my faculty there would have put most university PoliSci, International Relations or History departments to shame when it came to intellectual firepower. When I was there (1997-98) my faculty was mostly civilian and came from top-tier universities – Harvard, Oxford, Stanford, Yale, Penn and a score of next tier but still well-respected schools such as Duke and Georgetown.
And I certainly had my assumptions challenged everday. It was the most demanding intellectual experience of my life because of both the faculty and the compressed nature of the course (less than a year). The program was known as the “Book A Night Club” because if you were not reading that much, you were steadily falling behind. Woe be it to the officer who showed up the next day for class unprepared to engage in discussion. Fall behind too much and it’s straight back the the Army (Navy, Air Force) for you. I was also never once on the course for an afternoon golf game during the entire year.
If Ricks wants to knock the senior serice colleges, he should probably sit through one for a year before knocking them, instead of doing nothing more than showing up once a year to collect a speaking fee at them. (Ricks spoke to my class at Newport in November 1997 and is routinely available to these schools.)
True, the Naval War College was the first and for some time the only, independently accredited school in DoD and the others are now catching up. But to assume that only civilians can “challenge your assumptions” smacks of an intellectual hubris on Ricks’ part.
Instead, I’ve found the opposite to be true and it is something you’ve alluded to here, Jules, and that is the assumption challenging only runs one way. The military must have its “assumptions challenged” in order to be truly open-minded, but academia may remain safely enscounced in their ivory towers and not have to deal with the messy business of having their assumptions challenged. How do I know? Exactly as pointed out here – those institutions won’t admit ROTC to their campuses. Of all the Ivies only Cornell and Princeton have ROTC physically on campus. At NONE of the Ivies is course credit given for the ROTC classroom portion.
Just a question here….
Where has all the innovation regarding war fighting come from, especially over the last five years?
Oh yes, that’s right, the intellectually hide-bound and stultified military.
When the Army realized it needed to have culturally aware soldiers and needed them in a hurry it created the Human Terrain System (HTS). HTS embeds anthropologists and other social scientists within combat brigades so commanders get insight into the local population and its culture in real time.
What was academia’s response to that? To shun anyone who participated in the program.
There are other examples, but so much for the comfort of academics with having their “assumptions challenged.” So any time Ricks wants to start tackling the problem of military intellectual development and education from the civilian side instead of from the military side I’d love to see it.
It will be high comedy to be sure.
April 19th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
[...] Jules Crittenden, Information Dissemination [...]
April 19th, 2009 at 10:34 pm
This is a Trojan Worm argument put forward by Ricks.
Trojan in that it’s mimicking the Greek trick to get inside the walls, worm in that it’s appeasing to the belly crawlers.
Wipe out the Service Academies and the War Colleges and force reliance only on the ROTC programs.
Kill the ROTC programs by causing them to be unwelcome on campus through direct action by intellectually inbred students and their thought boss faculty.
Results, obvious.
Those may not be what he intends, but useful idiots rarely ever mean that they thought they meant.
April 19th, 2009 at 10:45 pm
Another thing, about them civvie PHDs and/or instructors lesser than PHD at Service Academies…
Can’t remember if it was West Point, or Annapolis, but I recall CSPAN covering it. Here’s the stage setting.
A fawning instructor introducing an “eminent scholar” and brilliant man to a batch of his students from the stage of a lecture hall.
The bright and brilliant man being introduced? Noam Chomsky.
The same Noam Chomsky that toured Pakistan and “Northern India” (Kashmir) in the weeks prior to our going into Afghanistan and speaking to packed, standing room only audiences, giving radio and newspaper interviews, etc etc.
His message? That the secret ambition of the coming American invasion was to force millions Afghans to die by starvation.
His purpose was to drum up as much aid for the Taliban in Afghanistan as he possibly could.
This is also the same man who proclaimed Pol Pot of Cambodian slaughter fame to be the greatest thing in human governance since… well… ever. And that all the bad news coming out of Cambodia was just “western propaganda”.
His appearance at the Service Academy was after the fight started in Afghanistan.
Oh, and for anyone interested, reading through the proclamations and directives issued by the Cornell’s South East Asia Studies Program through the latter half of the ’70s and during the ’80s might be interesting.
Ivy League. Long recognized as the breeding ground for socialist utopianism here in the US.
April 20th, 2009 at 12:37 am
I have a better idea. Shut Harvard and Yale.
Seriously, Our whole system is screwball. The private universities have enormous privileges. The first clue to this is the enormous piles of cash they are sitting on.
The only justification for privilege is service to the nation, and this is where they are falling down. I think we need to shake up the system in several ways.
First, Their tax free endowments should either be spent on their tax exempt missions or paid over to the IRS. Do not believe the bilge they spew about the costs of running their shops. If a business published financials on the same basis colleges do, the accountants would be tossed in the slam by the SEC pronto. P.S. no deductions for administrators salaries.
Second, the current system of college admissions is a scandal. Mostly it exists to provide cover to the private schools for favoring the children of the rich and the well connected over the ignorant saps from fly-over country. Replace it with a lottery based objective standards like scores on AP tests. Let the kids pick how far from home they want to be and whether they want to be in a city or the country, but otherwise — names from a hat. No more interviews, no more essays polished by $200/hr. consultants. No legacies, no politicians kids, just balls in a hopper.
Oh, BTW, no admissions until the kid has finished high school. Let them work for a year or two and be judged on their entire high school record not the first 3/4ths of it.
Third, no more funny business with the scholarships. Everyone should pay according to their means, but the schools shouldn’t get to play financial chicken with their parents. Scholarships should only be given out by the schools after the kid gets there and shows his stuff for a year or more.
Fourth, everybody deserves a chance but handouts degrade the recipient and are as likely to be squandered as used wisely. Uncle Sugar should get out of the scholarship and grant business and shun student loans which are a curse on everyone involved. Uncle should give tuition money to those who serve. Join the guard, or even the Marines. A year in the guard should be worth a Pell grant for a year. Active duty service more. Even the “peace corps”, but nothing on the if come. Serve first.
Finally, shut any college that does not have a Guard or ROTC unit on campus. Just shut them down.
April 20th, 2009 at 2:40 am
I didn’t graduate from a service academy; spent 2-1/2 years at USNA. Anyone who thinks the education received at a service academy is equivalent to a community college is severely deluded. I can vouch for the service academies being much more academically rigorous. As well as physically demanding. The whole person concept is actually used at the five service academies instead of receiving lip service as at Ivy leagues.
I don’t know anyone who has left a service academy before graduation and gone on to a school that was more challenging. And I have known quite a few who have left.
April 20th, 2009 at 3:06 am
[...] that, the obvious problem is, as Jules Crittenden points out, that a lot of liberal colleges aren’t allowing the ROTC in. A very, very bad [...]
April 20th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
[...] GET RID OF THE SERVICE ACADEMIES IN FAVOR OF ROTC? But what about the schools that won’t allow ROTC? [...]
April 20th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
Concerning a lack of Ph.D’s -
I have a son attending West Point. Some of his social science faculty members – Academy Professors and Civilian Faculty – are listed here. Most have PH.D’s, even from those fancy ROTC loving schools like Princeton, Columbia, Hopkins and even Harvard.
Guess these teachers had to make the choice between junior colleges or the Academy.
Guess Ricks didn’t have time to check out these very public facts.
http://www.dean.usma.edu/departments/sosh/3_Faculty/faculty.htm
April 20th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
Based on the conduct of recent West Pointers such as Powell, Clarke, Eaton and Zinni, I’ve made noises about turning the damned place into a museum and beefing up OCS. But if WAPO thinks the same thing, it’s likely a bad idea…
April 20th, 2009 at 6:33 pm
Coupla things:
1) “It is the classic fallacy of our time that a moron run through a university and decorated with a Ph.D. will thereby cease to be a moron.” H.L. Mencken
2) Where did Ricks get his high-powered education that he doesn’t know the argumentum ad ignorantiam? Some Podunk Community College?
He has beclowned himself.
April 20th, 2009 at 7:09 pm
I am not a service academy graduate, and when I tried to enlist or get a commission for service in Iraq or Afghanistan, I was told I was too old. So, I am just a concerned citizen. However, I can offer a useful perspective on the “quality” of civilian universities versus military schools.
I’ve been a self-taught historian for over 35 years (since boyhood), and some years ago I decided to get formal training in the subject. If what I have seen is in any way indicative of the overall quality of civilian institutions and their instruction, it would be a very serious mistake indeed to abolish the service academies.
Civilian universities and colleges share fewer and fewer values with the military, and traditional Americans generally, than at any time in our history.
Of course, there are exceptions, but college faculty today are overwhelmingly leftist, to radical leftist-Marxist. Post-modernism is the dominant intellectual current, alongside feminism and deoncstructionism. Political correctness has run amok. Middle-aged white males need not apply; female and/or minority candidates are preferred. “Diversity” is a word one hears frequently on college campuses; everyone says they are for it – unless it applies to intellectual diversity, that is. If you are looking for a position in the academy, disclosing that one is conservative and/or Republican is career suicide. Ditto supporting Israel, or being vocal about the threat of Islamic jihad. Lastly, being unashamedly pro-American, pro-freedom, pro-free enterpise, pro-gun, and pro-life are also “the kiss of death” in many departments – especially in the humanities.
I know a great deal about military history, and thus can say with certainty that many if not most civlian historians are unqualified to teach this subject. It has been out-of-favor on campus for many years, and is no longer taught as a routine part of a well-rounded history education.
In a nutshell, closing our service academies is a bad idea, given their historic role as repositories of many of our best traditional martial and cultural values. Personally, I’d like to see the civilian academic world grow more like, not less similar to, the service culture.
Speaking as a would-be citizen soldier, I’d like to see the military expand opportunities for mid-career professionals to become military leaders, either NCOs or officers. Since we are talking about older entrants, perhaps that would mean doing it via shorter length AD or reserve terms of service. That means upping the age cutoffs for entering the services, and reconfiguring how officers and NCOs are selected and trained. There’s a lot of good, unused talent out there that could do a lot of good in the military if these reforms were made. There are practical hurdles to overcome, but I’m convinced these could be managed successfully and the return would be sustantial in my view.
April 20th, 2009 at 7:32 pm
This nonsensical idea comes up every ten years or so. USMA and USNA have been around a long time and the success of their graduates speaks for itself. Furthermore, the military remains very tradition bound, and on that basis alone Ricks’ proposal will go nowhere.
My wife and I were both direct commission officers (Army MC). We respectively graduated from the two undergraduate colleges attended by our current president. When our son told us he was interested in a military career, he was strongly DISCOURAGED from considering either one of our alma maters. He’s currently finishing his plebe year at the Academy and knows he made the right choice.
April 21st, 2009 at 1:07 am
# richard mcenroe Says:
April 20th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
Based on the conduct of recent West Pointers such as Powell, Clarke, Eaton and Zinni, I’ve made noises about turning the damned place into a museum and beefing up OCS. But if WAPO thinks the same thing, it’s likely a bad idea…
Okay…I’ll bite:
Powell: ROTC City College of NY
Zinni: Marine Corps’ Platoon Leader Class at Villanova University
Eaton: USAF officer, but graduated West Point
Clarke: West Point
CJ, Lt Col, USAF
April 21st, 2009 at 9:19 am
“Just ask David Petraeus, a Princeton PhD.”
if I want to talk about international relations, I’ll talk to General Petraeus. If I want to talk about killing people and breaking things…I’d rather consult with George Patton.
April 21st, 2009 at 10:20 am
[...] with the opportunity to tweak the establishment in the 500 words or less. I’m quite sure that the rest of us spent far more time rebutting his little foray into military education than he spent drafting [...]