Tom,

You raise many good points and I have many thoughts on this topic which, thankfully to some readers, I don't have time to explore. That said, there are a few things that must be explored when looking at the academies and exactly who comprises their entering and graduating cohorts. As an ROTC graduate who is a big champion of the OCS college option program, I am ambivalent about West Point. Do I see the value it contributes? Yes. Have I been impressed by some of its graduates? Hell Yes! Have I been apalled by some of its "bad apples"? Yes again.

The Academy admissions process seems heavily weighted towards the extremely motivated HS students who "know what they want" (or think they do) at 16 and those with, shall we say, "pushy" parents who make sure that the nomination process is completed, the DODMERB physical gets done and the application is dress-right-dress perfect.

The Academy admissions process also seems heavily biased towards those with certain social attributes such as varsity letter winners and Eagle Scouts. The overwhelming majority of USMA admissions are varsity letter winners and I believe that Eagle Scouts comprise a significant percentage as well. The problem is that these admissions positives are skewed to certain geographic regions more than others. What do I mean? Let's take varsity letter winners. I attended an urban, all-male Catholic HS with about 900 students. Shortly after I graduated, they were ranked #6 in the US for HS Football. Many freshman entered with hopes of making the varsity squad, but probably less than 30% of aspirants (if that many) could. Ditto for Basketball and Baseball. A well rounded JV athlete from this good high school would be viewed lower than a kid from, say, a rural high school with a graduating class of 80 (both sexes) who made the varsity football squad because they needed everyone on the team who could play.

Same for the Eagle Scouts. The Boy Scouts are a great program. I was one myself and both my brothers made Eagle. That said, the Boy Scouts look NOTHING like the male, youth of America they are drawn from. In December, the NYT reported that only 3% of Boy Scouts were Latino even though this demographic comprised over 20% of the "Boy Scout eligible" youth of this country. What's more, the Boy Scouts are disproportionately Mormon - something like 20% of overall enrollment if I recall correctly. Boy Scouts are a great character building program, but participation - when it is so unrepresentative of US youth and geographically imbalanced - should not be a discriminator in academy admissions. Varsity Letters and Eagle Scout are not discriminators for ROTC enrollment (scholarships are a different story) and OCS enlistments.

I would be the biggest champion of the Academies if they really populated their classes with the "10 nominees from each Congressional District" they like to cite to their supporters. In a perfect world, we would have 10 kids from each district - every district. That means Maxine Waters, John Conyers (Army OCS graduate), Donald Payne, Jose Serrano, Luis Gutierrez, etc. would all have a proportional stake at the Academy. SATs and varsity letters be damned. The Academies are not meant to be "Ivy League lite" and should do a better job of representing the diversity (more than just racial) of our nation. In 2007 (I believe, could have been '06), only 5 NYC residents graduated from West Point - despite the 5 boroughs having a larger population than Virginia. This is unacceptable and we are missing the boat on potentially great opportunities given the robust JROTC presence in urban America. There are bright spots like Francis Lewis HS in Queens which has the largest enrolment at USMA of any HS in America. That said, these bright spots are few and far between.

Finally, The Academies can only be one avenue (of many) to an officer's commission. We must have an avenue available to "late bloomers" that choose in college or beyond to explore service as an officer. Sadly, we have closed many of these opportunities in recent years. Example: The Navy. The Navy cyrrently maintains no ROTC presecence in NJ, CT, RI or NH. Navy OCS acceptance rates for college grads are extremely low. For students in some Notheastern statess, 17 is increasingly becoming the "one shot" to have access to the navy officer corps. This is not a healthy development. The officer corps can't be limited to 17 year-old "gunners" so sure of what they want.

Mr Ricks,

As an Air Force Academy graduate, I take extreme exception to your article. Tell me...are you a service academy graduate? Have you personally experienced the extremely rigorous and challenging academic programs at one of the service academies? Or were you, perhaps, denied a service academy entrance in your past?

While I will agree that some of the best offers I have had the pleasure to work with came from ROTC or direct-commission commissioning sources, I will not agree that across the board ROTC provides better educated officers.

You make the statement that if we were to send service academy officer candidates through ROTC programs, "they also would be educated alongside future doctors, judges, teachers, executives, mayors and members of Congress. Are you not aware of the number of excellent doctors, lawyers, professors, and politicians who are service academy graduates?

You also make the statement that we should send our officers to receive "a military education at a short-term military school." We need to keep in mind here that the purpose of a military education (to include ROTC) is supposed to be the development of the best OFFICERS the military has to offer while providing them with a degree...not to create the best student possible who just happens to be an officer. Do you really want someone who has had maybe 4-6 months of military training to be leading your son or daughter in combat? There is a level of military education at the service academies that is unavailable anywhere else, and has nothing to do with Geometry or English...you are given the tools to be able to lead hundreds of personnel in a time of war, to be able to make the tough decisions in a time of crisis, and to be the best you can possibly be physically, psychologically, and spiritually.

Service academy graduates are not better than ROTC graduates, not by any means...but they are different. I have classmates who are the worst possible officers I have ever met...but I have met just as many ROTC commissioned officers who were very clearly in the wrong line of work. While the service academies may not be "real" schools, if you were to close them down I guarantee you would very quickly notice a difference in the make-up of your office corps...and not for the better.

Any officer candidate who is worth their salt is going to continually strive to better themselves and to recognize unwarranted biases when they present themselves, whether those biases be military or civilian developed (as it is naive to think that civilian institutions do not also develop and promote their own biases)...not allow themselves to be brainwashed.

I, along with hundreds of my classmates, experienced the greatest and most rewarding challenges of my life while at the Air Force Academy - academically and militarily. And believe me...if your assessment that we "reinforce their biases while getting in afternoon golf games" was correct, my handicap would be MUCH higher and I would not be the officer, leader, academic, or person that I am today!

You are entitled to your opinion, and I can appreciate that - but I believe your opinion is uninformed.

Respectfully,
Dana L. Dallas, Maj, USAF, MSC
Dana.Dallas@mcguire.af.mil

I, like many of the officers I served with, were all Army OCS College-ops who quit our jobs after 9-11 and joined up. In Iraq in 05 I served in an armor company with 3 other officers who I went through basic training, OCS, and armor school with. We all did pretty well, and there certainly was no distinction in our education when it came to our performance in combat. We're all still serving in the military in various forms (some active, some guard). Why not just get rid of ROTC too and turn everyone into 90-day wonders?

D. Eakins

Mr. Ricks,

I greatly admire your work but was disappointed by your short stinker of an op-ed in the Post.

First, though there's too much of marginal value in an academy education, they do not provide "community-college educations," as you argue. I went directly from the Air Force Academy to one of the top five graduate programs in English literature in the country, and finished the program in half the time while doing much better work than most of my peers. That outcome was less about me than about what I took from the very well-rounded education provided by that small science and education college in Colorado. The fact that a relatively low percentage of academy faculty hold PhDs is immaterial. My wife and I have attended or taught at four colleges and universities, including Georgetown and Penn State. The instructors at the academy are as good or better than the run-of-the-mill graduate students and post-docs who wind up teaching undergraduates at top private and state universities.

Second, isn't there a hint of hypocrisy in a Yale graduate calling for the elimination of the military's equivalent of the Ivy League? As much as we may like to pretend otherwise, many American elites still have an aristocratic view of the world. Military academies may not be necessary for the military, but they remain necessary for some officers to gain traction in civilian circles that care about pedigree. If you care about the quality of the U.S. officer corps, you should turn your pen toward convincing your alma mater and other Ivy League schools to admit ROTC students. When the number of undergraduate slots in the Ivy League set aside for cadets attending on government scholarships equals the academies' annual output of officers, we can talk about shuttering West Point, Annapolis and USAFA.

Lt Col Tadd Sholtis, USAF

Hyman Rickover was often critical of the Naval Academy (of which he was a graduate) as a source for officers to go into nuclear power training. Asked once how he would improve the Academy, he had a simple answer: "Close it!"

I

I would like to take exception to the statement that service academy graduates dont stand out. While, some responses seem to be disgruntled arguments after not gaining admission,I will not condemn other commissioning source as they provide excellent officers. I would like to respond to some of the mistruths in Mr Ricks original if a I am correct is a Yale graduate who in committees at Harvard with no military service.
I feel $130,000 is underestimating the cost of an ROTC education if you include drills and summer training. Most elite institutions cost 40-50 thousand a year for room and board. Maybe, the number was calculated for community colleges since we are comparing to the service academies community college education.
While the selection of classes and the percentage of Phd's is less, the final product is of most importance. Reviewing the Rhodes scholar website for the last reported 4 years 12 of the 120 Rhodes scholarship recipients were service academy graduates. Not bad for a community college. This does not include Marshall scholarships etc. The other negative of not having a large percentage of Phds is more important of research and funding. Do you really believe the best teaching is done by the professors? The teaching is done by graduate students and young faculty. Faculty that has just completed training and and can relate to the students needs. I was blessed to have excellent faculty at West Point in the late 1970's. Many of these faculty were scarred from war but felt they wanted to contribute to future military generations. These were not all USMA grads but instructors from other commisioning sources. And even a medal of honor recipient that started as enlisted.
I was one of the 2% of my class that went directly to medical school and at least that many from my class have pursued medical careers in the military and afterward. Many have pursued law degrees after 2 years of mandatory obligation and are now judges and even attorney generals. I recently went to a mini-reunion in DC for a congressman from my class. This event was sponsored by a classmate that owns one of the biggest construction firms recently completing a major project at Atlanta airport. I ran into a good friend, that stayed in the Army for his 20 years received a Phd at Stanford and taught at Penn State before becomiing a ethics and leadership professor at the USNA. If I knew this article was coming out I could have joked with him about wasting all the education and ending up at a community college.
I also feel it is unfair to state th the service academies have biases from their education. Do you really think that IVY league schools don't have their own inherent biases. When college professors prep their students for protests of certain speakers is that not imparting biases. I never found bias in teachings at West Point. You were taught to think on your feet and stand for your convictions. If every institution followed the West Point Motto of "Duty, Honor, Country" we would all be better off for this. The military service academies play an integral role in our military. They provide quality leaders that "stand out" and are comparable to those at other "rigorous" institutions you mention.

**This is the opinion of one man and in no way is the opinion of the United States Military Academy,the Corps of Cadets, the Armed Services or the United States Government, in any way, shape, or form.**

Mr. Ricks,
I read your article and found it very interesting, but i was very dissapointed about the level of research you performed before publishing it. I don't have much time so you may get another response from me, but just a few quick points.

1st:
"Just ask David Petraeus, a Princeton PhD."
--Although General Petraeus may be a Princeton PhD, he is also a graduate of the long gray line(USMA) and a former instructor.

2nd:
"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."
--As a resident of Carlisle Barracks, PA, the home of the Army War College,the golf course at the Army War College isn't even that great.Neither does it get that much use by students, Most of the people who use it are retirees and veterans. Also the classes of War Colleges are broken into Seminars or indivual classes about 10-20 people in size. In each Seminar there is atleast 1-3 foreign officers, diplomats, or civilan students. There are also culteral enrichment functions, briefings by foreign officials in which the students and public can interact with the speaker and a lot if not most of the instructors are civilans with PHDs from Civilian schools.

3rd: "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.

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."

--As a former student of Penn State I can tell you the price is the same or more for a ROTC cadet to a West Point Cadet. In total the government payed $100,000 for my education, books, board, food, etc. And that was just for 1 year.

Also, true a lot of the instructors do not have PHDs, however when i attended Penn State I had to go during office hours to recieve help. When there i was helped by a Teaching Assistant who may or may not have been up to date on the material. While as a Cadet I have the home and cell phone numbers of all of my instructors, email, any means of contact and they are willing to answer questions at any time of night or day. And yes i have called an instructor at 2 in the morning and yes they did answer my question.

Finally:
ROTC offers many full-scholarships to many schools, which are more expensive to the goverenment than USMA, USNA, or USAFA. An Air Force Cadet at a DC area school has, his schooling, books, food, an apartment off campus in a very prominent neighborhood, etc. all paid for. Your research of the price of education is poor and needs to be re-evalutated. Especially becuase you your self attended a school, which when payed for by ROTC(goverenmnet funding), costs way more than West Point.

Sir, I challenge you to come to West Point and see the academics and campus for your self. I would be very happy to escourt you and make the arrangements for you to speak. As an educated man your opinion and insight would provide great development to the United States Corps of Cadets and future officer corps.
God/Allah/ Jehovah/whoever you may worship bless the United States!
Go Army, Beat NAVY!!!!! Beat AIR FORCE!!!!!!!!!!

Mr. Ricks,
Thank you for the thought provoking article. I appreciate you candor and your intestinal fortitude to raise this question. I have three items I wish to write if you allow me.

1)I wish to submit this following article from the Boston Globe concerning West Point Grads leaving at or shortly after their five year commitment is completed. It has some very insightful data that would lend credit to your argument.

http://www.truthout.org/article/west-point-grads-exit-service-high-rate

2)This past year my daughter applied to the US Naval Academy. During this process we had some very specific questions that we wished to ask. The answers we sought were less than forthcoming. I felt at times as though they were rating my child based upon the fact that I am a retired enlisted Marine. I certainly hoped that they treated other people better than they did her. As a result of this treatment, she decided to turn down their opportunity. Instead she will be seeking her commission via PLC from a liberal Arts college here in Virginia that also has a strong and long military tradition.

3)And lastly, your article made me look back at my career. I decided to name the top three officers I served under. All three came via PLC…..hmm, maybe there is something to this.

Have a good evening and Semper Fi
I figured you earned it….you walked with us grunt Marines!

I'd hoped for more cogent rebuttals to Ricks's Post Op-Ed from graduates of the service academies than those appearing upthread, the primary message of which appears to be, "Is not. And didn't you go to Yale?"

I've formed no solid opinion on the ideas Ricks puts forth about the service academies, other than that there appears to be a case for them. There must be a case against them as well, but we're not reading it here.

"Lieutenant, you have 9 junior enlisted, an NCO, and a long pole to be used as a flag pole. How do you erect the flag pole?"

“I need to secure some ropes and shovels…”

“WRONG! You look at that NCO and say ‘I need that flag pole up in 3 hours’ and walk away. If that NCO needs anything from you he'll find you.”

Not exactly a sterling example of leadership but it will serve. My point is that an Officer is first and foremost a leader. The troops he is leading do not care where his or her education came from. Neither does the enemy. An Officer with an engineering degree may be able to tell you how to build a bridge. He may even draw up the plans. But he needs to be able to communicate those to the people under him. One of the best Officers I knew had a degree in Political Science. He was an Ordinance Officer. He was placed as our company XO when we went to Iraq 2005-06. He also served as the Scout Platoon leader. Daily patrols. No losses (and not because he didn't take risks). How did his Poli Sci degree help him? It didn't. Where he got the degree from was irrelevant. He knew how to lead troops and when to listen to his NCOs. That is what made him a good Officer. If you are looking at the prestige and history of the place an officer got his degree from you are looking at the wrong factor. Do the service academies produce good leaders? Personal experience says the ratio is about 2/3 good, 1/3 bad with the good being very good and the bad being very bad. Not much in between. ROTC officers tend towards a broader range leaning towards the good. Generally you cannot tell the difference unless you see the class ring. It does not matter in the end if an Officer was Valedictorian at West Point or the goat of Podunk Community College. What the military needs is leaders. Everything else falls after that.

As an avid reader of your books, columns, and articles I was somewhat surprised by this column. In both ‘Fiasco’ and ‘The Gamble’ you portray a group of officers and advisors as the champions of the COIN movement in Operation Iraqi Freedom and heroes who stood up to the Administration and Pentagon. These highly competent men were almost solely responsible for the recent turn of events in Iraq. Yet it would seem the one common thread that links all of these men is West Point. Here is the list:

GEN Petraeus – West Point Graduate and professor
GEN Odierno – West Point Graduate
LTGEN Allen – USNA Graduate
BGEN McMaster – West Point Graduate and professor
LTC Yingling – West Point professor
LTC John Nagl – West Point graduate and professor
LTC Douglas Ollivant – West Point professor
LTC Charles Miller – West Point graduate
Frederick Kagan – West Point professor

I would submit, almost exclusively by looking at this list, that not only is West Point serving the army well, its class sizes should be increased. One can only imagine that a cadre of future General Petraeus’s and McMasters are now either teaching or learning at West Point.

Nevertheless, Go Navy, Beat Army!

Very respectfully,
LCDR Dan
USNA '99

I don’t think Mr. Ricks is saying that the service academies don’t create good officers – as so many of these responses seem to suggest. He is saying that they don’t provide a sufficient marginal benefit over other alternatives.

Even assuming the service academies are superior, the figures that Ricks uses means they would have to provide more than twice as much benefit for the American taxpayer for every officer they produce – either in quality, length of service or some combination of the two. This is a pretty steep proposition.

(As an aside, high school students would also do well to consider this same calculus before forking over the dough for an elite university.)

Are you not aware of the number of excellent doctors, lawyers, professors, and politicians who are service academy graduates?

The fact that West Pointers go on to become civilians doesn’t mean anything. All soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen return to the civilian world unless they die in the service. This does not change the fact that their military backgrounds give them a fundamentally different view from those who have no military background. The civilians that soldiers need to interact with are those who have never been in the military. Both give each other fresh ideas.

Tell me...are you a service academy graduate? Have you personally experienced the extremely rigorous and challenging academic programs at one of the service academies? Or were you, perhaps, denied a service academy entrance in your past?

And this right here is exactly why soldiers need to have regular interaction with civilians. You do not need to attend a school to ask critical questions about it, just as you do not need to be a journalist to criticize a reporter’s work. Both are subject to open, critical examination from outside observers. Quite simply: Mr. Ricks, like all of us, is a taxpayer and is entitled to question whether those dollars are being spent as efficiently as possible.

The number of Americans with a personal tie to the military is declining, and I’d bet it gets even worse after the current wars conclude. Do you really want to make that worse by arguing that the rest of the public just doesn’t understand and is therefore not entitled to an opinion? That’s the surest way to doom the military.

That being said, I think one of the biggest arguments for keeping the academies is recruitment. I’m not sure the military would attract the same types of candidates that the academies do with ROTC - even at elite universities. Service academies, as various college rankings attest, represent a perceived value for driven students seeking an elite education. It doesn’t matter whether those perceptions are correct; they’re out there (which is why U.S. News considers reputation so highly in its rankings). Without the service academies, these students could very well choose other professions.

This is not to say that these students are better officers, but they bring a different style to the mix that – along with ROTC and OCS – is an important part of the whole.

Is this sufficient reason to keep the academies? I’m not so sure, but I’m glad whenever someone like Mr. Ricks broaches a question that causes us to rethink our certainties.

Shutting down the military's trade schools - I'm sure that went down well at the Sunday breakfast table!

I was commissioned under special circumstances from the enlisted ranks, during my second tour in Vietnam, and though I lacked the scholastic background of many of my peers, at the time, it was never an impediment to command in my case, nor grasping the Art of War.

What I find facinating, unless I've overlooked it, there are no comments about tapping those enlisted that have proven sustained leadership on and off the field of battle for unrestricted commissions.

I'm not unaware that programs are available, but by the time many enlisted bloom and become recognized by their superiors, or become aware of these programs themselves, they are considered ineligible due to age requirements, etc.

I would be interested in hearing from anyone with thoughts on this topic, as it relates to commissioning.

"Strikes me as second rate" strikes me as not well-informed. What is it specifically that causes you to say this? Where have you gotten this information? Been to the war colleges for any extended period of time? Sat in on classes at most or all of the war colleges? Are you aware that the military students already interact with diplomats (State sends both students and professors to the War Colleges) as well as intelligence professionals, other USG civilians, other services, and international officers from dozens of countries. Have you read the accreditation reports from the independent organizations that oversee the graduate-degree-granted status of these institutions? Those reports indicates anything but "second rate" -- this coming from outside academics. Professors there certainly and regularly challenges student assumptions. Professors are not at all just active-duty military officers or retired officers. They include large percentages of civilians, some with the best academic credentials and others with that plus policy experience (something that is often sorely lacking in traditional academic settings). Seems like that was a throwaway paragraph that was not well-researched or well thought out. Come visit. Spend some time. Ask the students what they think. Ask the graduates.

This is worth an extended conversation at some point, but a few thoughts. One, on the issue of Iraq, have you read Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Iraq by Ahmed Hashim, a professor in Newport who spent time in Iraq working for both Petraus and McMaster? Also his recent Adelphi paper. Two, public publications may not be the best, and certainly ought not to be the only metric to measure the worth of war colleges. They are at least half, if not more, teaching institutions. The teaching faculty are paid to focus on high numbers of contact hours with students and quality instruction. Some still produce voluminous and quality scholarship, but they are much like small, liberal arts college professors -- the measure against which they are judged primarily is teaching. Others at the war colleges are paid to research and write. Some of that writing is public and published. You may judge it as you wish. Other portions of it, however, is either not public or is classified, so it is tough to get a full picture of what has been done through reviewing journals and books. Affecting national security policy, particularly in the last administration, is a pretty darned tough metric for anyone who wasn't the President, VP or SecDef. That said, some of the impact was on subjects that may not be front page all of the time, and some was at the theater or operational level where it is less visible that what is typically covered in the national papers. Anyway, glad to chat offline if you wish at any point. BTW, the "coach" moniker is little league baseball, so I'm afraid you may be slightly over the age limit....