Why Pentagon is Failing to Keep its best and brighest

[MemberLG]

Another piece "against" the Army by Thomas Kane in a Foreign Policy article

As the war in Iraq wore into its most corrosive years, a problem began to emerge -- the military, and especially the U.S. Army, was losing its young officers. Editorials were published and examples cited, and by early 2011, the crisis had been recognized at the military's highest levels. But the young captains and lieutenants whose departures at the height of the Iraq war caused this soul-searching at the Pentagon are only half of the story, the superficial half; these are young warriors in harm's way with young spouses and toddlers back home. The military's retention crisis cuts deeper into the heart of the Army. The more complicated and more important half of the story is about the colonels

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The Retention Crisis

All cadets who graduate from the U.S. Military Academy commit to serve a minimum of 5 years as a military officer, after which they can resign their commissions or continue on, presumably toward the full 20-year career. Retirement is available to everyone who serves 20 years or more, which means half of one's monthly pay for the rest of one's life, plus full benefits. A few cadets agree to longer commitments (two to five additional years) in exchange for graduate school or flight training.

When the U.S. Military Academy (USMA) class of 1999 reached its five-year mark in 2004, 72 percent of the graduates chose to stay in uniform, and 28 percent resigned. This net retention rate sends a signal about the overall health of the junior officer corps, and 2004 was an early warning sign compared to the normal range of 75-80 percent. A year later, the retention rate dropped again to slightly less than 66 percent, the highest departure rate in 16 years. Not since the end of the Cold War had so many young officers left the service after their initial commitment. In the late 1990s, junior officers were being asked to leave, but by 2005 the military was begging them to stay.

While all branches of the military experienced challenges, only the Army was in crisis. According to a March 2007 story in USA Today, the retention rate of West Point graduates was "as much as 30 percentage points lower than the rates for graduates of the Navy and Air Force academies." A common complaint was that the elitist academy graduates were the problem, not the Army per se, since ROTC and Officer Candidates School (OCS) officers remained at high rates, but that's a myth. Retention problems afflicted ROTC scholarship officers even more than West Point graduates. A 2010 monograph by Colonel Casey Wardynski, Major David Lyle, and Michael Colarusso analyzed the retention of officers in the 1996 cohort by commissioning source. While it is true that the percentage of West Pointers in the class of 1996 drops dramatically at the five-year point (from 90 to 60 percent), it must also be said that OCS officers started the year at 70 percent. And while the USMA rate declined steadily to 41 percent at the eight-year mark, this mirrored the ROTC officers who had three-year scholarships, and was higher than the 35 percent eight-year retention of four-year ROTC scholarship officers.

On a side note, I believe one of the study mentioned showed that overall retention rate for senior officers (MAJ and up) were higher for West Point vs othe sources of commission. So this begs the question as to how do we evulate the effectiveness of West Point as a as source of commission?

 

[bruno]

I didn't read the Atlantic/ Foreign Policy article that Kane has written, but I have the original study (link below). To begin with- the study does not say that they started at a 90% retention rate and have now declined . What it shows is that the studied group (YG 1996) were at 90% at the 4.9 year mark and dropped to the 70% range at 5 years- at which all sources are about equal. From there- USMA and 4 Yr ROTC scholarship winners drop precipitously to slightly above 40% respectively at the 7year point. (see page 41 -43 of the study.)

Is it a crisis? I don't know. It's an interesting study that raises some interesting points. Frankly I think that the Army has done a miserable job of managing its personnel for the last 70 years so I seriously doubt things will change much. Is USMA really more effective than given credit because of the relatively high % of above center of mass OERs in field grade officers? - Interesting and debatable point of view I think. How do you quantify that value and determine what is "cost effective"?

I think that whatever value it (and the other Service Academies) have, the burgeoning cost per graduate is going to seriously put their value in question regardless of the % graduates make up of the senior officer ranks. It's one of the reasons why I find the "big check " practice not only silly, but seriously counter to the best interests of USMA, because bluntly- from the perspective of a tax payer - if a 4 year full ride to MIT costs $225k - then for anyone to trumpet that a full ride to USMA is $400k is to spit in the eye of every Tea Party taxpayer who already thinks that the Government spends too much on everything. (Yes- I know that the method of calculation of the "scholarship value" at a SA is fuzzy and not exact and includes lots of things that aren't comparable to a scholarship- except that by doing this you make them comparable in the public eye. If you want to advertise those numbers then you will get hit with them at the worst possible moment!) Those schools have a lot of fixed overhead- so declining class sizes are going to actually increase the cost per grad, which then increases the pressure even higher to"demonstrate" the effectiveness of the program- Anyone dealing with aircraft procurement knows this cycle. So it seems to me that from a self preservation aspect alone if no other reason, this is an issue that the Army needs to be looking at in detail just as the study has done, and treating it as a crisis.

http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/PUB965.pdf