Agreed. There are far better engineering schools and certainly better liberal art colleges. The only unique element that the service academies seem to provide their graduates is a smug sense of superiority that they and their officer cliques are entitled to special deference and consideration. Also, there is nothing in American military history to indicate that our service academies produce a superior officer product than a host of other technologically advanced western societies that have more egalitarian systems of officer selection.

..all of the Academies routinely score in the top 10 (usually top 5) of US News and World Reports College engineering school evaluations. USMA ranked as THE number one school in a recent article by Forbes. Guess that undermines your conjectures that there are better engineering and liberal arts schools?

http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/spec-engineering

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/0824/colleges-09-education-west-point-america-best-college.html

And casting disparaging remarks about any particular commissioning source over another source is pretty sad and unproductive. Nevertheless, all those who didn't go to an Academy routinely don't have a problem doing just that.

Note: Some enlightened individuals realize that there are good and bad officers that result from each different source just like there are good and bad people in any stratification of America or the world.

But since I am one of those smug assholes who graduated from one of those worthless academies you'll go on ignoring the truth in favor of snottiness and ad hominem. Hypocrisy much?

US News and World Report and Forbes are not authoritative when it comes to ranking the top academic institutions in the country. Try The Center for Measuring University Performance http://mup.asu.edu/. USNA and USMA are barely mentioned. They are not in the top 100 by any measure. Close them.

No I guess U.S. News isn't authoritative but they have been doing the same study every year for I don't know how long.

But cmon, you are calling your website authoritative. Uh, sure, but the Academies aren't research and development institutes. Why would you expect them to show up in those ratings? (Joe Wilson would say YOU LIE!). I mark their not showing up on a list of research universities as a GOOD thing. Contrary to EVERY other university in America the service academies actually function as places of teaching their constituents - instead of pursuing tenure and research grants.

I've attended classes in other top grade universities, I also hold a Masters and PhD. What passes for teaching in any of them pales in comparison to a 100 level course at the academies. There the instructors are mostly officers with Masters degrees. Oh my can't learn anything from them - or so the logic goes. Unfortunately the logic fails, because most classes in other universities are taught by whom? Oh yeah, TAs, who happen to hold Masters degrees and are pursuing PhDs.

Yeh I am biased. but since I actually have experience at the Academies and other universities I also have a frame of reference. Tough to sit back and listen to a bunch of equally biased know-nothings throwing out stupid, non-applicable websites.

When you say "top engineering university" I tend to think of schools like Cal Tech, MIT, Stanford, etc. When I see that they aren't on a list, I start to wonder why.

And then I realize the list consists of schools that do not have Ph.D. programs.

Being at the top of that list is like becoming the Division I-AA champion in football. I guess that's something to be proud of, but c'mon. We know where the good schools actually are.

As far as access to actual professors, I never had a class in which an actual Ph.D. gave more than an hour's worth of lecture time in an entire semester to a non-Ph.D. Labs were run by grad student TA's, yes, but labs were more about "learn by doing" than "learn from a teacher." Also, most students used the access to professor office hours for quality one-on-one QA sessions.

So yeah, trying to defend the academic credentials of the service academies is a losing fight.

USNWR also ranked the best liberl arts colleges, with Williams, Amherst, etc..being listed. I am pretty sure we all know those are the best schools when it comes to liberal arts and the USNA was in the top 10, so are you saying they are wrong there too?
The Academies do a good job, have a very high level of education at the Bachelors Level and while they are not MIT or Cal Tech, I would argue they still make a superior product and that someone who attempts to debase the academic credentials of those schools needs to maybe visit the schools or do some research first before throwing bombs at the them.
Really, come on, this is one kid who screwed up and people are about to get there pitch forks and torches for the schools! lol Hmm....a bit of an over reaction if you ask me. He is getting a break because he is a jock and the CNO wants the Officer Corps to be more representatvie of America and as of late even the enlisted ranks are actually under represented by Blacks in the Military when you look at the military as a whole. Do I think it set a terrible example, yeah but it is one guy, it is not the end of the world and who knows what will happen down the road about this case.

Perhaps if you understood that Service Academies aren't Research Universities, you'd understand why they aren't mentioned.

USNA doesn't use TA's. Students are taught by professors. It actually isn't hard to defend the academic rigor of USNA. Evidently it's harder to come up with a cogent argument against it. USNA isn't a research university, and it's classes aren't taught by TA's.

Take the money the taxpayers are spending on the 4 service academies and put it into the ROTC programs in the top 25 public and private RESEARCH universities. There are exceptions, but the best thinkers in this country largely work at research universities. The services would gain, but society as a whole would gain more. The academies are an anachronism.

One, a lot of the schools do not want or have kicked off ROTC Programs during the Vietnam War or shortly afterwards. They use DADT as an excuse to keep them out but I will bet money the antagonism towards ROTC will not stop once that ban is lifted.
Two, the Academies only work towards one primary goal, training for leadership in a military realm, ROTC is a part time thing at best at most Universities. There are intangible benefits to the academy system as well.
Three, if you put that same amount of money out to the Universities at 25 schools, that does not save any money so what would be the point other than just to get rid of the academy programs themselves?
Why is there so much resentment against the academy program for the services? I am curious what it is based on, really. No sarcasm, just curious.

It's a fair question and I don't have a very good answer. It's probably my gut reaction to the snobbery of many USNA grads. I never thought their elitism was justified and thought on average the NROTC and OCS folks did just as well. The USNA grads may have hit the decks running a little faster, but the playing field was level by LTJG. It's possible the presence of the USNA ensigns pulled up the NROTC and OCS ensigns up. I'd really like to read an thorough analysis of this question. Does anyone know of any recent reports written by an unbiased group?

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Among all this craziness a voice of true reason!

RD -

Rickover hated the Academy because it was intensely anti-Semitic when he attended...

A friend of my father's (and USNA '40 grad) once told me Rickover offered him plankowner command of the SEAWOLF but not the NAUTILUS. I asked him why, he said Rickover swore a Naval Academy grad would not take the first nuclear sub to sea...

How many ROTC OCS astronauts are there? ROTC/OCS Congressmen and Senators? Presidents?

I promise I won't tell anyone you agreed with me. Yes, O5.

This Squid doesn't deserve a second chance. Officers (and officer wannabes) should be held to a higher standard.

But I have to wonder why there is a zero tolerance policy of any kind? It's just not good form. In the Army they accept that some junior enlisted will make a mistake (but they only get one).

Note: Soldiers who come up hot have immediate discharge papers initiated - but it is up to the chain of command to make that decision. Second offenders, NCOs and Officers can basically kiss their career goodbye.

I guess in this situation I like that the chain of command made a decision - even if it was the wrong one.

Since when has the school's Athletic Director been in the chain of command?

Totally agree with you on how junior enlisted should be treated (allowed to screw up once) and how NCOs, O's and repeaters should be treated.
The Navy is going a bit nuts on Alcohol incidents now too, one chance is all you get, next Alcohol related incident and you can be processed out with an Admin Discharge.

This did not happen in a vacum, the skipper had to sign off on anything for it go forward.

If service academy football get's your goat (pun intended), the following would have lit your fuse: at one time the Army and the Marine Corps, etc. had semi-pro football teams - the Corps' for instance was at Quantico. During the draft, some players that didn't have the juice to avoid it, ended-up on these teams, others were drawn from the ranks - both junior officer and enlisted.

All this came to a halt (drill command of execution given as the left foot hits the deck) under Jimmy Carter, along with what perks each general officer rated by rank. Sadly, Carter also found out about the greatest kept secret - the inter-service international trap and skeet team. They traveled world-wide on the tax payer's dime and were composed mostly of E-9's and 0-5/6's that had nothing else to do.

What's the foregoing have to do with the subject at hand? Nothing, but it parallels yours.

Roll another one
Just like the other one
That one's burned to the end
Come on and be a real friend

It's been around for years. The kids call them blunts. They take a cheap cigar - a Phillie Blunt is what the recipe calls for, hence the name - hollow out the center length-wise, and fill it with pot.

Smells disgusting - the mixture of pot and what used to be called a nickle cigar. They may use White Owls too. Just awful.

Gee, sounds like it would be pretty easy to mistakenly take a toke....

It takes more than "A toke" to pop positive.

Not if they are smoking modern hybrid green pot. It's substantially stronger than us old folks were, uh - exposed to - in college an/or our early 20s a few centuries ago.

Some of the stuff is so strong you get get a positive test just be being in the room. Seriously.

Thou shalt not foam at the mouth.

(Rule #1 does not apply in wingnut forums ... where your last posting belongs. This one, in a great blog, is about a football player and a pot bust, not The End Of The World.)

Wow! Seriously dude, I go off on rants at times but sheesh! Take a wrap off!! Wow!

it is a leadership issue, are the claims without merit? Don't scuttle your ships by not addressing the lines on build up to the war, the creation of detention centers and law violations, the after action employment of flags and the privatization of leadership and ethics. When you start ranting at my comments, I feel that I have placed a "long lance torpedo" firmly in the broadside of a boatload of brown shirts and the keel has been broken.

Now, you may fire when ready gridlies.

Lighten up....

: )

Cannabis was reportedly deemed a beneficial palliative, in an Army medical study conducted during Panama Canal construction.

We could move the Naval Academy to California, where permissive medicinal use is likely to lead to some interesting case law, re NCAA rules.