We have now have most selective enlistments in the history of the AVF (most-educated and accomplished new enlistees ever)...the economy has done wonders for us (and for officer recruiting too....) over the past three years. But yes, there's a lot of deadwood to clear out from the lowered standards of the mid-decade. We're chaptering people left and right. An Art. 15 or two is enough to get you barred from re-enlistment or even chaptered now. We've even brought back Ch. 18 (h/w failure).

It's my belief that this issue will sort itself out due to the above. Ditto for suicides (heck, the majority of suicides in the Army have been by SMs who haven't even deployed...preexisting issues mainly).

The AVF is a grand concept for 'the violent peace' and forms a solid foundation on which to build an army. But when state-side duty and small-unit operations turn into deployed major force, the AVF has only one recourse if it's to avoid calling on the American People for support and that is to scrape the bottom of every barrel to be found. Having done so since 2001, we end up with a broken Army and deep dysfunction even in life's easiest assignment, garrison duty.

Had the alternative of a draft been chosen, the volunteer side would have continued to get good people (USMC, Navy, and USAF always benefit in recruiting numbers and quality when a draft is active) and the draft-side Army would have had pick-of-litter selectivity of the non-volunteers.

Alas, promotion-happy careerism and Army self-delusion (about its own nature and that of the nation it serves) kept the draft off the table, that and the Republican Administration of George W. Bush knowing that its imperial dreams could not be realized if the sons (and, in a correct world, daughters) of our citizens were required to fight and die 'because he tried to kill my daddy.'

I know the Army chauvinists who spend time here will decry these plain facts, but the alternative is our current reality. How you like our Army today? How well did the AVF do in two easy wars against two sets of hapless, under-resourced, ill-equipped irregulars?

Lieber,

I think you need to slowly step away from the AVF hagiography and get a bit more objective.

We do not have the "most-educated and accomplished new enlistees ever" - especially when comparing the enlisted cohort to the civilian, enlistment eligible population from which they are drawn. In reality, the draftee-volunteer hybrid Army of the early 1960's was the "most educated" Army the US ever fielded when compared with the overall civilian educational AT THAT TIME among the enlistment eligible cohort.

In 1964, 17.2% of draftees had "some college" (defined as a year of college or more), as did 13.9% of volunteers. In 1962, 24.7% of Army entrants had "some college." Fast forward to 2010 where only 8.3% of the Army's E-4 and below have a year of college or more and less than 3% have a bachelors degree.

This is noteworthy, because college attendance rates among the civilian population have MORE THAN DOUBLED since 1964! At the same time, the percentage of Army enlistees with college experience has FALLEN BY HALF. "Most educated force" indeed.

Now, a clever debater could quite rightly point out that in 1964, 28.7% of draftees and 39.4% of volunteers lacked a HS diploma. This would be true, but that same year, only 64% of 18-21 year olds had a HS diploma. Such is the price of a citizens Army. The upside is that you do bring in some smart folks - smart folks we could use today.

I'm curious about your claim that the economy has helped raise the quality of officer recruiting. If OCS was growing or staying in a steady state, I would be inclined to agree. Unfortunately, Army OCS, the one way to bring more talented young people into the officer corps is being eviscerated and we are haeding back to the old ROTC/USMA duopoly of commissioning sources. Have you looked at the Army ROTC footprint? We still have commisioning programs at 2 year junior colleges like NMMI, Valley Forge and Wentworth. We have 10 ROTC programs in AL and only 3 in NJ despite NJ's far larger population. I can't see how we get a "better" officer corps resorting to a culturally/regionally narrow ROTC footprint. Targeted OCS recruiting of civilians a'la the USMC is the only to way to fix it.

I would also add that unlike the pre-AVF era, the Army now lacks the tools to place soldiers in the most appropriate jobs/skills. While pre-enlistment instuments like the AFQT and ASVAB are good, they miss the intangibles that can only be seen through direct observation. In the old days, the Army assigned the MOS to many soldiers at BCT after actually observing them in the Army. Reverting to such a system could avert the self-selection problem we see in today's combat arms formations (slowly becoming overwhelmingly white as the nation gets more diverse). It would also make sure that folks that clearly have no business in the combat arms, don't get to the combat arms.

I apologize for this stream of consciousness post, but I am pressed for time.

(and I agree with you most of the time)...I said the most selective enlistment class in the history of the AVF. You didn't rebut that. apologies if I didn't make that sufficiently clear.

As for officer recruiting, across the board my perception is admittedly anecdotal but for specific branches there is overwhelming data (for example, the JAG Corps has by far its most selective class ever...approx 3000 applications for approx 130 spots...only a couple years ago they'd have 400 applications for those spots). Ditto for reservists trying to go active in any branch...just not happening. The economy has had a massive impact. That's clear. Ask any recruiter.

With that said I completely agree with you on the paucity of ROTC programs in the northeast and the cultural bias of the Army toward only one part of the country.

Skipper, let’s nuance this a bit. During Viet-Nam, when the draft was still active, albeit, not a level playing field (nor would it ever be), the Corps swelled its ranks, and among those within the ranks, were a significant abundance of just plain bad people that we were made to accept. . .I see the same issues today aboard and outside major bases, as I saw back then.

I will grant you that sadly, the AVF is convenient for politicians to employ on expeditions to foreign regions they know nothing about, for dubious reasons, because they know very well, they don’t have to answer to the MOA (Mother’s of America) as they once did (and should).

But the real issue isn’t the AVF, the issue is as Sun Tzu noted: “No nation has ever benefited from a prolonged war." Something we should have learned 40-odd years ago, and apparently haven't.

RD, let me guess, the AVF is a demon seed that must be exorcised and that only a draft will purge it's unholy existence from the DoD? ;)

IRR, the areas that Officers and Enlisted come from has nothing to do with the Military, remember, many of the Northeast Schools kicked them off the campus and still keep them off. Why should the military go back into those areas? They have limited resources, why spend it on places that really do not want them, limit what they can do and still do not accept their credits? It almost all politics on those campuses that still do not want them there too, they could care less about many of the things you and I do.

Also, that whole line of thought, while commendable to expand ROTC and is a common theme with your posts, has little or nothing to do with these guys who have gone on mini crime sprees. You are almost as bad on this topic as Ducky is about the AVF and his hatred of the Army ;)

"RD, let me guess, the AVF is a demon seed that must be exorcised and that only a draft will purge it's unholy existence from the DoD?"

No. It's an ill-conceived expedient, perhaps noble in its inception but an utter failure when put to the test. And it's left us with a badly broken Army.

I think you are confusing the way OCS works with the way you would like it to work. While there are some high quality officer recruits who enlist with a bachelors (or higher) from very demanding institutions, I believe they are the exception rather than the rule. Far more common are the Soldiers who entered after high school, or a little college, and have completed their bachelors at one of the many dubious correspondence programs marketed at Army education centers everywhere. An on-line education does take some effort, so these Soldiers are motivated, but they may not be 'highly educated'. There are plenty of ROTC programs at less rigorous institutions as well, so I am not asserting a ROTC superiority, rather pointing out that OCS is pulling in fewer Harvard or MIT graduates and more University of Phoenix grads.

And for Lieber: I think JAG applications are a poor indicator. There is an unhealthy glut of lawyers in the US at the moment. Army JAGs will argue with me, but I believe their positions generally involve far less personal risk than other (non-medical) branches. My feeling is that the surge in applicants are seeking to be lawyers who happen to be in the Army. That is not the same as an engineer or an English major who goes to OCS and ends up in the Infantry.

The reduction in reserve-to active duty transfers is also a bad indicator. While it might imply that full time service has become preferable to a career in the reserves in the current economy, it doesn't tell you that the officer corps is getting better. Any of the few who make the transition were already commissioned. You could tell me that reserve officers are as a rule better educated/trained or otherwise more qualified than their active duty counter-parts, but I wouldn't believe it.

A pair of studies to consider:

1. A BMJ study that found low IQ in early adulthood linked with higher rates of Suicide.

http://group.bmj.com/group/media/press-release-archive-files/BMJ/bmj-2010/BMJ%20-%204%20June%202010%20-%20Low%20IQ%20scores%20in%20early%20adulthood%20increase%20the%20likelihood%20of%20attempted%20suicide%20in%20men.pdf

2. A study conducted back in 2000 that linked low IQ to higher likelihood of PTSD.

http://www.personal.psu.edu/users/a/l/alm5084/483/ePortfolio/Buckley.pdf

So these two seem to fit in nicely with the Army problem of "bottom of the barrel" soldiers offing themselves and contracting PTSD at a rate of about 1-in-3.

SILENTSHWAN: Good links with some good data, but they're not relevant to my post.

In my post, I stated that you COULDN'T accurately equate IQ to school grades because environmental, maturity, and family factors have such a great impact on how a student does in school and therefore the military would be missing out on many good applicants based solely on high school class ranking.

I'm with you on that front, limiting enlistment by GPA would be a grave mistake. I was just addressing you on your first paragraph. I again agree with you also with the ASVAB as being a good starting assessment.

I think GT improvement tests should not just be a 1-off, it should be mandatory and at be given at least once every 2 years. This would give soldiers better opportunities while in the force, and would give the Army the added benefit of seeing those who are susceptible to PTSD (based on the aforementioned PTSD report). It would force soldiers to seriously look at their education and might actually get their butts off the Xbox and back in class.

More random research:

Here's a USA today (ArmyTimes repost) article in '08 saying 1-in-8 soldiers were admitted with Moral Waivers: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/04/gns_waivers_040708/

Kaplan also has an '08 piece on the staggering number of CAT IV recruits admitted into the Army: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2008/01/dumb_and_dumber.html

No disagreement here sir. Fortunately I worked for a very supportive BDE CDR that allowed me to chapter 18 soldiers in a 21 month period of command. The majority of these were up front. The discipline and morale improved. There were no empty threats, just action taken against ill-disciplined Soldiers.
BUT, w/o the support of an outstanding BDE CDR, this would have never occurred. I went to war shorthanded, but we went with Studs.

I agree with the spirit of your post and your points(not excepting criminals, high standards, rapid separation of bad actors, etc); I more just disagree with the some of the smaller details(excluding a lot 60% of availible applicants based solely off of high school class ranking)

Read about that and it is a very sad story. The female Park Ranger loved her job and as I understand it her husband is also a Park Ranger. These Rangers are often alone in remote locations with makes them very vulnerable. Whether she was armed I have no idea or even it would have made any difference. But many Rangers do not like the idea of arming themselves as being contrary to the spirit of the parks. Around here the Rangers are armed such as Organ Pipe and Saguaro National Park’s and Coronado Natl. Forrest but these areas are often avenues for visitations by Mexican drug infiltrators who will stop at nothing.

"I wish we did things a little more like JPWREL wants and were more selective but it appears they are already just looking to purge folks who maybe 15 years ago had a drinking incident or other Article 15/NJP and I am sure that when times are tough on recruiting they will of course lower standards again. Same Song over and over again."

Of course that's how it will play out. Agree with you on that. But for the time being the economy combined with force reductions is having an impact.

Damn, that's depressing, but you're right on. Now what?

//Dateline: the cultural wasteland of Colorado Springs//

You want a realistic answer, or an idealistic answer?

Good lines:

"The military has pre-purchased his time in bulk, and is not worried about wasting it."

"The center of his emotional life is his team, squad or platoon, which has its own culture. What that's like doesn't depend on any initiative from higher. It depends on a few key personalities and their interactions."

I'd like to hear the realistic solution.

Great points though overall.

There is no realistic solution. If there is anyone in USG who has enough pull to change the situation (which is doubtful,) he has no motivation or serious incentive to change it. If you somehow combined the powers and incentives into one person, he would not be in his office long enough to implement the changes, which would take at least a decade. If you locked him into that position, the people he had to answer to in the executive and the legislative branch and the resources allocated to him would change six times in that decade. The current situation is an inevitable outcome of decades of evolutionary selection pressures and entropic processes within a massive bureaucracy working for a democratically elected elite with its hands off the levers. The concentration of power it would take to fix it is unachievable within the red giant that is today's USG.

B, come on, I know you are usually not "rainbows and unicorns" but sheesh! I have to believe that there is a way to fix a few of the problems we have in the DoD, at least a few that are within our control-PME, Leadership, Selection/Training Standards, Recruitment and that these things will then lead to changes at the level you are talking about. At least that is my hope, I know you are most likely busy telling kids there is no Christmas or something but hope you will buy into the idea we can change some things ;)

Eric-I did tell my baby sister that there is no Santa Claus last month, but it was for a good cause-we're of another religion and she doesn't need extra confusion in her life :)

Look, the fact is that any meaningful reform will have to pass between the Baal of democratic figurehead leadership and the Moloch of bureaucratic career progression. If I notice that it's raining fire, I can point out the fact even if there's not a fireproof umbrella in sight, right?

I do have an idealistic solution, but there is never any shortage of those, and I don't believe it's possible to get there from here. It is a super-cool idealistic solution, though.

Come on, you are practically asking to lay it out, thought that was part of the blog anyway-ideals! :) Cheers.

End the foreign commitments. Germany, Japan, Australia and South Korea are big countries with healthy economies-they can take care of themselves. Not to mention our best buddies in Afghanistan and Iraq-they can figure out their own security, or hand things over to those who can.

Cut the ground force down to a "small" size-say, 100K on active duty between the Army and Marines. Get rid of everyone else-pay them their basic pay until ETS up front, lump sum, buy them civilian health insurance, and cut them loose. The military would be saving money on people whose function is currently to be stage props, and those people would be able to contribute to the economy in some productive role.

Build a military that sees the individual as its greatest asset and investment. Have a high minimal IQ cutoff for enlistment-at least 110. Have a six month long pre-enlistment fitness and dietary education program built on the latest athletic principles, and have a high entrance gate to even get to basic (relatively high-say, 70% in all events on the PT test.) Build a secular analogue of the Israelis' Hesder system. Those kids take on a five year (I think) commitment, where they study in yeshiva for six months, then serve for six months, rinse, repeat. Make the basic commitment eight years, and send them to college 3-4 months a year of that first enlistment, to study STEM, no soft skill B.S. Since the colleges are basically part of the government anyway, it shouldn't pose a problem to make them cut a deal.

Now, you've got kids being socialized in civilian society and gathering useful skills, plus being able to get hitched to normal women, not Fayetteville's Finest. At the end of eight years, they've all got highly employable bachelor's degrees with no debt-those who choose to stay, stay because they love the profession of arms and become the core of the military, the rest go into the reserves and make the civilian world better. Now, instead of attracting MS-13 members and making military towns into human landfills, you've brought America's best to them, and you've elevated the military profession into something you can actually be proud of, instead of cringing when you see idiots with high and tights and "Who's Your Baghdaddy" t-shirts screaming at their kids in the local Wal-mart. Make the military a selective route to personal development and a social elite to be looked up to, not the DMV with guns.

End the officer/enlisted dichotomy. It's a relic of the days when the mass of the military was provided by illiterate peasants and guttersnipes and its leadership was a bunch of aristocrats whose main selling point was literacy (and knowing which fork to use on the salad.) Today, it's a dumb caste system which segregates the practical knowledge from the theoretical and the power to make things happen, and breeds micromanagement in the Os and irresponsibility in the NCOs.

Make a regimental system with minimal PCSing. If your unit sucks-you fix it, because you'll be there for the next decade or so. Everyone knows everyone else. No more of the "I got here last week and there's gonna be some changes! OK, my year's up, time for bigger and better things, see you suckas, here's your new boss..."

Basically, do what the Wehrmacht did in the 1930s or what the Prussians did in the 19th century.

Now, do you want to tell me all the reasons this will never happen and things will keep going the way they have been, or should I?

B,

None of what you desire will happen if an 8 year enlistment (ADSO) is attached. This issue has been studied to death and Charles Moskos spent a good chunk of his later years exploring it. BLUF: all studies show that the propensity of military candidates with viable civilian "options" (e.g. educational, athletic, vocational) declines as the ADSO of military service is lengthened. The longer the ADSO, the more likely you will attract the aimless or the "self-selecting." Your proposal is a one way ticket to an insular warrior caste and it would be disastrous.

From my vantage, if you want the "best", you need a shorter ADSO. The 4 year hitch standard is too long. The Army relied on a 3 year volunteer contract until the mid-70's because recruiting challenges necessitated a longer, 4 year ADSO to keep bodies in the force. 4 years is long enough to easily lose track that there is a "light" and the end of the tunnel. 4 years is long enough for a young person to seriously ruin their life through bad financial/personal choices.

We should have a 2.5-3 year ADSO and use the end of this term as an opportunity to assess the performance of those coming to the end of their hitch. This is the way to shape the force and increase quality.

With all the talk of potential "cost savings", I'm shocked that there is no discussion of the benefits of a limited national service regime. You could have a large force for a fraction of the cost as we wouldn't have to pay above market wages to attract enlistments. Furthermore, single 18-20 or 22-24 year olds in the barracks are a hell of a lot cheaper than the current system where we pay the housing/medical/child care costs for 36 year old PFCs with spouses and 4 kids.

People will sign for eight years if you give them enough reason to do so. Right now, there are plenty of people signing for five and six for MI and SOF. A cost-free bachelor's degree and a chance to be part of an elite should be enough reason. Creating an insular caste is a fait accompli-we're already there for the SOF guys and the intel apparatus. I just want it to be a bigger, better motivated, better educated insular caste.

As far as the potential of having a mass of sullen conscripts, it would be great if we needed some massive ditches dug by hand. For warfare-not so much. A guy doesn't really turn into an asset to his unit for a couple of years, by which time conscripts are getting ready to GTFO. The better they are and the higher their potential in the civilian world, the more they can't wait for FTA day. You want guys who could be out there in the civilian world and be competitive, but would rather serve, and in order to do that, you're gonna have to select them and build them over a long period of time.

I'm down with nearly all of what you say, save this. An ironic exhortation, too, as someone (or some place) seems to have taken the job of educating you on soft skills BS pretty seriously. Either that or you're Abe Lincoln-esque when it comes to self-study.

Love the "human landfills" and "Who's Your Baghdaddy?" references... Amen.

B,

You are idealizing something that doesn't exist. Despite all your lofty rhetoric about the "time it takes to train a soldier", we are still deploying kids mere weeks out of OSUT downrange. So, if a draftee or volunteer gets deployed out of OSUT, they are still a soldier with minimal time in service. I've actually done a fair amount of study on the enlistment length issue, and the cumulative combat exposure resulting from the recent OPTEMPO/PERSTEMPO has had myriad adverse results.

You create a "red herring" about "digging ditches". Draftees/national servicemen can do any number of things that are currently outsourced to for-profit contractors for a fraction of the cost. There is also an added benefit of having a larger trained pool of military manpower in a crisis. That short bench bit us hard in OIF as we were tapping the IRR for -10 level individual replacements as early as June 2004.

Furthermore, the 5-6 year MI contracts and 18X contracts represent a smal fraction of the total enlistment cohort. To extrapolate that these small numbers suggest a deep interest in 8 year ADSOs among talented youth is pure folly. Look hard at our current ROTC commissioning cohort. There are a lot of dim bulbs from lower tiered schools despite the scholarships and short ( 4 year) ADSOs the Army has to throw at the problem.

He did say his idea would never be accepted and we pressured him into telling anyway. Cut him some slack. He's formulated some better, more creative ideas than I have seen lately from the guys who get paid big bucks to champion change. I don't agree with all he has to say but I think he's at least formulated a compelling suggestion.

...self taught, is what I'm trying to say.

The issues with soft skills are as follows.

1) Even in an ideal situation, they're value transfer skills, not value creation skills. You can see the difference-the demand for stuff is a lot more stable than the demand for hot air. Check out the job prospects of a guy with a bachelor's in journalism and another guy with a bachelor's in math or mechanical engineering.

2) In my experience, many of the people who choose the soft skills route do so because they can't hack the math involved in STEM. You can't bullshit your way through calculus or physics.

3) The typical guy with a bachelor's in hard skills can always go the soft skills route in grad school. The converse is false. Further, I believe that this is because the more rigorous training in STEM teaches you to think much better than the bloviating and mimicking of soft skills, and this transfers to your ability to adapt to complex new situations...like, say, war.

4) Worst of all, in our society, soft skills are what Richard Feynman referred to as "cargo cult science." The full lecture is here (http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm)-well worth reading, much better than anything I can say on the subject. The long and short of it is that it is the provenance of guys who crave the credentials and prestige of the hard sciences, but don't have what it takes in the brains or dedication department, and caulk the gap with bullshit. The worst parts of 20th century American history were direct results of these assholes being put in power, from the Great Society (as seen in Detroit, or Fayetteville,) to the Vietnam War. Do you really want your military led by guys who honestly believe that "Perception Is Reality," i.e., that Bullshit Is Truth? Because that is the essence of soft science as it exists today.

Right off the bat, I'd like to point out that there are about 30K guys in SOF and more in intel (the NSA, DIA and NGIC have large uniformed components, not to mention the MICOs, MI BNs and BDEs.) We're pretty close to 100K today.

I fully agree that if we keep fighting wars like we fought Iraq, we're gonna need a lot more sullen and stupid junior guys to do things that third country nationals can do for a fraction of the cost. Things like cook, drive trucks and hold up reflective belts. To get enough guys, we might have to resort to a draft. On the other hand, Iraq was hardly a ringing success. Perhaps we should try to learn from armies of occupation that didn't suck and wars which weren't followed by everyone involved going "let's never do THAT again."

In the inevitable event that we do decide to bring the light of progress and democracy to some third world dump again, we should learn from the best.

For example: the Brits controlled all of India and put down the Sepoy Rebellion with about 50 thousand guys. No aircraft, no SATCOM, no trucks, no problem. They turned a profit doing it.

The same Brits held turn-of-the-century Egypt and Sudan, with a population comparable to that of Iraq today, with about 5,000 troops. No fuss, no muss. Again, profit.

How did they do that? Mixed administrative structures. In order to create and operate mixed administrative structures, where the guys driving trucks, cooking and manning checkpoints are locals, the middle managers are a mixed bag of Americans and educated locals, and the upper echelon is American, you need a large cadre of cultured, independently thinking, well educated, disciplined individuals with initiative. The kind of guys that you can tell "the ten of you and this suitcase of cash are going to build this town's civilian infrastructure and police administration over the next three years-let us know if you need anything else." You're not gonna get that from anything that looks like today's military-the SF guys, PRTs and MTTs claim to be it, but the reality doesn't even come close. You're DEFINITELY not gonna get that by starting a draft.

To bring it back around to the root of the thread, I don't see how a large draft would solve the problem of military towns sucking. If a medium-sized volunteer force can't figure out a way to keep out the crack dealers and rapists, a large draft-based force somehow will?

I like the general ideas you are putting out, it is an idealist situation, not sure I agree with such a small force overall with us having close to 325 million folks already but the general ideas are great. The last post was very spot on but how do we sell the reality of war, how it is fought and how we "should" do things to the general populace?

Eric,

The general populace knows and needs to know as much about warfare as it does about quantum physics or molecular biology. Its main concern is getting the mortgage and bills paid, which should be a lot easier with a smaller, more effective military. Anyway, I don't agree with the idea that a reform needs to be sold to the general populace-it needs to be sold to the elite, and they'll take care of selling it to everyone else. Look at the magical growth in popularity for the idea of combat gender integration or gay marriage-was there some national debate where everyone was wowed with formal logic and close argument that I missed?

3) The typical guy with a bachelor's in hard skills can always go the soft skills route in grad school. The converse is false. Further, I believe that this is because the more rigorous training in STEM teaches you to think much better than the bloviating and mimicking of soft skills, and this transfers to your ability to adapt to complex new situations...like, say, war.

The above is false. I can speak from my "soft" skill--whatever that means. I'm a classicist. Students who study the classics score better on the GRE than any other single major; they score better on the LSAT than any other major, and, most pertinent, they score better on the MCAT THAN ANY OTHER MAJOR. (This includes pre-med and biology.)

Emptor Caveat: the above statistics were taken from 2006. This could have changed in the last 6 years.

The fact that you call certain majors "soft skills" speaks volumes on your outlook on education, and the problem with the American attitude towards it. Universities aren't a place to gain a skill. Trade schools, Community College, and Vocational schools are places you learn a skill. Universities--when done properly (and a lot of them do this)--teach someone how to think. What are the best undergraduate institutions in the nation? The obvious ones--Harvard, Princeton, Yale et al.--but also schools like Williams, Amherst, Macalaster, Swarthmore. Guess what? They teach a liberal arts curriculum because they understand that learning how to think is more important than learning a specific skill.

Lastly, Julius Caesar, Arthur Wellesley, Joshua Chamberlain, and James Garfield would have been much more successful had they majored in math or engineering. Robert E Lee was an engineer, though...

1) Classics is a highly non-representative soft skills field. Communications, business, psychology, sociology, etc. are representative.

2) You are (purposefully?) conflating classics, liberal arts and soft skills.

2) I understand Virgil and Livy don't much emphasize the importance of citing your sources. Still, I'm going to have to ask you to do that.

3) The sources I was able to find were weak sauce-statistics on med school admissions which had something like 50 classicists out of a 25K sample of students. Show me something better.

4) Data showing that classics majors had high scores on the SATs and GREs doesn't show that classics teaches you to think-just the opposite. Both tests are highly g-loaded and indicate IQ more than anything else. If you showed low scores coming in and high scores coming out, that would be an indicator of what you're trying to show. As it is, the data shows that guys with high IQs going into college have high IQs coming out of college-stop the presses!

5) Why do Swarthmore et al peddle soft skills educations? Why do crack dealers sell crack? Simple answer-it's profitable. How much does it cost to train a physicist? Now, how much does it cost to train a history major? The tuition for both is the same, but professors' salaries are lower for the latter, since universities are not competing with the private sector for soft skills Ph.Ds. Also, a physics or chem lab is a tad bit more expensive than a classics lab.

6) I would like to see proof for your assertion that Caesar received something comparable to a modern-day soft skills college education. Admit it, you just threw him in there without thinking much about it, right? As far as Chamberlain and the rest are concerned, a respectable classical education in the 19th century and earlier involved major amounts of hard math-trig, geometry, algebra, etc. Lee was awesome-if the Union had anyone comparable running its forces, the war would have ended early.

7) If you don't know how to think when entering a university at 18, you will not know how to think when you leave 4 years later. The reason the "a university education exists to teach thinking, not skills" party line is so popular in soft skills academe is that "thinking" is not quantifiable and skills are. If your output is not quantifiable, no one can call you a failure.

8) I would love to see you argue that skills in chemistry, mathematics, physics and engineering belong in vocational and trade schools.

9) The people I personally know who are the best at "thinking," in other words, forming and supporting original arguments and being open to new ideas, tend to have hard skills backgrounds.

1) Classics is a highly non-representative soft skills field. Communications, business, psychology, sociology, etc. are representative.

Obviously you didn't spell out what a "soft-skill" major was. How I've understood it, it's non-STEM majors--something you've alluded too apophatically ("soft-skills" are what trig, algebra, engineering aren't). I'm surprised that you have lumped psychology in there. Would you include neuro psychology? Apparently anything dealing with the human element of knowledge is "soft."

2) You are (purposefully?) conflating classics, liberal arts and soft skills.

I'm purposefully doing nothing. Again, you didn't definitively state what was "soft."

2) I understand Virgil and Livy don't much emphasize the importance of citing your sources. Still, I'm going to have to ask you to do that.

The Princeton Review guide to colleges and majors, 2006. Here's an excerpt from their website: We can't overestimate the value of a Classics major. Check this out: according to Association of American Medical Colleges, students who major or double-major in Classics have a better success rate getting into medical school than do students who concentrate solely in biology, microbiology, and other branches of science. Crazy, huh? Furthermore, according to Harvard Magazine, Classics majors (and math majors) have the highest success rates of any majors in law school. Believe it or not: political science, economics, and pre-law majors lag fairly far behind. Even furthermore, Classics majors consistently have some of the highest scores on GREs of all undergraduates.

3) The sources I was able to find were weak sauce-statistics on med school admissions which had something like 50 classicists out of a 25K sample of students. Show me something better.

The above is what I thought of; it was off the top of my head.

4) Data showing that classics majors had high scores on the SATs and GREs doesn't show that classics teaches you to think-just the opposite. Both tests are highly g-loaded and indicate IQ more than anything else. If you showed low scores coming in and high scores coming out, that would be an indicator of what you're trying to show. As it is, the data shows that guys with high IQs going into college have high IQs coming out of college-stop the presses!

That might be true, but, then again, you can make the point that STEM majors do the same thing. I would imagine that most Classics majors didn't come across the major accidentally. No one finds himself or herself having taken too many Latin courses the way one might have history or poli-sci courses. Likewise, most engineers and physicists probably set out on that course from the start.

5) Why do Swarthmore et al peddle soft skills educations? Why do crack dealers sell crack? Simple answer-it's profitable. How much does it cost to train a physicist? Now, how much does it cost to train a history major? The tuition for both is the same, but professors' salaries are lower for the latter, since universities are not competing with the private sector for soft skills Ph.Ds. Also, a physics or chem lab is a tad bit more expensive than a classics lab.

There is no classics lab, but I know that from the standpoint of the University of Michigan this is true only with the Medical and Dental schools. They are paid more to lure them from the lucrative side of their profession. However, tenured-track positions are paid the same no matter what department/school the professor teaches/researches. Also, the idea that liberal arts schools are liberal arts school due to low overhead is, at best, cynical, and, at worst, ludicrous.

6) I would like to see proof for your assertion that Caesar received something comparable to a modern-day soft skills college education. Admit it, you just threw him in there without thinking much about it, right? As far as Chamberlain and the rest are concerned, a respectable classical education in the 19th century and earlier involved major amounts of hard math-trig, geometry, algebra, etc. Lee was awesome-if the Union had anyone comparable running its forces, the war would have ended early.

No, I didn't just throw him in. He was trained as any man of privilege of his day: Schooled in mathematics alongside Greek and Latin literature, and, most importantly, rhetoric. These together taught him the requisite skill set--analytical reasoning and critical thinking--that would make him one of the western world's greatest generals...and tyrants. As for the 19th century education. I have a PDF for the entrance exam to Harvard. In 1864. It has more literature, history and geography--to include Latin and Greek--than it does geometry and algebra (which are on there). Of course the geometry was linear, and the algebra was nothing that a high-school level Algebra II teaches. Again, they are on there, but they are no the emphasis.

7) If you don't know how to think when entering a university at 18, you will not know how to think when you leave 4 years later. The reason the "a university education exists to teach thinking, not skills" party line is so popular in soft skills academe is that "thinking" is not quantifiable and skills are. If your output is not quantifiable, no one can call you a failure.

Not true vis-a-vis getting smarter after 18. In fact, the mental growth and development that happens between 17-27 is terribly important. Ever wonder why 18 year olds and 30 year olds don't find much in common? How many 18 year olds are ready for graduate-level study (and I'm not talking about the diploma mill online graduate schools). Is it because the 18 year old doesn't have the necessary knowledge base? Hardly; he hasn't been guided towards the proper way of thinking. There's a reason our education system--and the education systems of most of the world--are set up the way they are. I was one of those students who struggled early on in college, but later excelled. My twin brother, a Ph.D candidate in Medieval Philosophy, was as well. With regard to the "party line" talk. Have you ever read Husserl, Foucault, or Derrida? Can you quantify their contributions to human knowledge? What about the good owner of this blog?

8) I would love to see you argue that skills in chemistry, mathematics, physics and engineering belong in vocational and trade schools.

No, but then again all of the engineers I knew from undergrad are hardly doing engineering. Most of them are overglorified foremen working for the big 3 or parts' suppliers. To do real engineering (or physics or chemistry) you have to go to grad school.

9) The people I personally know who are the best at "thinking," in other words, forming and supporting original arguments and being open to new ideas, tend to have hard skills backgrounds.

And there are a host of others you don't know who have "soft-skill" backgrounds who are amazing at thinking, in other words, forming and supporting original arguements and being open to new ideas.

See, that's EXACTLY why I hate the soft skills. I'm done.