The year many of the most promising serving O-5s and O-6s — all Services — spend in senior service college functions as a sabbatical. The problem faced by up-and-comers is the opportunity cost of taking time out of the already crammed pipeline to flag rank. Senior service college is accepted by the Services as a net plus for a career. I fear that selection boards would see time off for other pursuits as net minus.

For more junior officers, this might prove less costly, but even already sanctioned tours such as post-graduate school can sometimes extract a promotion price.

And 20 officers a year is pretty close to tokenism. Good to see at least one Service experimenting this way, but I suspect that this program will be of little impact or duration.

Mr. Ricks,

Turns out I took a sabbatical by accident. I also did it at my own peril.

After five years on active duty I resigned. I spent a year in the IRR before I volunteered to be recalled to active duty. During my first assignment as a recalled reservist I worked for a previous regimental commander. He told me he always thought the Marine Corps should offer captains a one year sabbatical.

I think my feelings before I resigned were fairly typical of my peers. I was frustrated, felt my ability to make a difference was nil, and I faced a future of increasing futility. I also wondered about what could have been. My education is as a civil engineer. I wasn't doing that in the Marine Corps. When I resigned I had the chance to go do that.

After a few years as a recalled reservist I was able to apply to return to active duty. Time will tell whether my year out will hurt my chances for promotion. I don't follow the cookbook career pattern.

It's also important to say that my year out was not a chance to see if the grass is greener on the other side. It never is; but it did give me a chance to learn another set of skills as well as more about myself. I am better for it.

I think the colonel, a Vietnam vet, was right. I think I'm better off for my year away. I think the Navy is applying some creativity to their personnel policies and breaking some of their peacetime manpower models. That kind of thinking should be rewarded.

It is a good idea-but in practice it is not going to work. This is just a sop to folks who want a "mommy track" for female officers.

The simple truth is that those who take the year-will come back at a disadvantage with the folks who did not take the year off. Plus-in many cases the best officers will be the ones who may not be able to afford the time off because they have kids or the wife is not working or some combination thereof. So it will be a double standard that develops almost immediately.

The better solution is to keep folks on active duty and pay them while they do things that enhance their viabilty-like instead of insisting they get a master on their own time, let them have two years to study at a Civilian university. The could have a collateral duty to lend time to help recruit, but their primary focus would be on having time to get their masters. Or let them work a year or two in another agency as an intern.

None of that still solves the problem of the additional cost it takes to bring them back up to warfighting speed when they return-especially if they are aviators. So what will happen is high investment communities such as aviation will lose out on the deal.

It is still a service-not a corporation. Some things that work in the civilain world don't translate well here.