Patent,
From your perspective it is the Fed budget re:scholarships
However, if it was a Fed budget issue NROTC and AFROTC would have not released their boards either. They have released in the same time frame.
This is an Army issue, which is a part of the Fed budget. It is Army centric from a manpower POV. The Army has limited dollars to spend within the Fed budget. They are working on FY 10-11. Military budgets run Oct 1st to Sept 30th. Incoming scholarship recipients will come from FY 11-12.
Outsider POV, but to me the motivation is Army manpower needs along with Fed budget. We are drawing down from Iraq and Afghanistan, thus, the Army will be like the AF...too many members for military needs. Where to cut? The Army is looking at balancing the budget they have with their future needs. In these economic times it is tricky.
Pima, I agree. It's not just Fed. budget. The only thing that is "purely" Fed. budget is the case of a shutdown, when the services are prohibited by law to initiate new contracts (keeping active duty folks at their desks is not "new contracts", but committing funds to cover new offers of scholarships is).
As I understand it, each service gets their marching orders from DoD on (1) their mission, and (2) how much they have for the FY to spend to accomplish that mission. There is flexibility among the finance departments/budget offices in each of the services on how and when to accomplish things, and they have different approaches. For example, the Army may be more guarded on the front end and hand out fewer national scholarships as a result. And if AROTC underestimates for some reason, it can fix things by pumping up the number of campus-based scholarships. In contrast, the Air Force may be less compelled to be guarded, knowing that it can be more hawkish about cutting folks when the Class of 2015 completes its sophomore year of college.
The point is that there is uncertainty in the air for all agencies. Where there is uncertainty in the air, things move slower and more cautiously (people are more ready to "prepare for the worst").
That said, uncertainty doesn't mean that there will be a drastic reduction in headcount. It's more of a timing thing. The President's budget does NOT call for major reduction in the Army Class of 2015. However, Army budget planners know that there is going to be a major budget battle ahead and that it may be unwise to make plans according to the President's published budget request (Congress has the final word on budget matters, not the President). In the days of balanced budgets or surplus, Congress basically rubber stamped what the President proposed. But we are not in a day of balanced budgets or surplus.
At the end of the day, everyone in AROTC knows that May 1 is an important date in the college selection cycle. AROTC will meet that deadline by extending offers in early April and give folks 30 days to decide whether to accept/decline the offer. I would expect that April 1 will hold regardless of the noise in Congress. The only thing that could have thrown a monkey wrench in things was if there was a shutdown in Feb./Mar. But now the CR is extended until Apr. 8, which I believe will be AFTER the day AROTC offers from the last board are extended (so the issue of shut-down is basically become less relevant now).
The end result of all this may mean this -- fewer AROTC scholarships now but more campus-based scholarships in the fall once the budget is sorted out.
That's just my view.