Former SECNAV and AF historian want to replace ROTC

But that isn't what USMA exists to do and the reason that the Army funds it is because it is supposed to be the core of the professional Officer Corps. The Army is spending multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars manning and running a Service Academy ostensibly to provide the base of the Career Professional Officer Corps. The USMA mission statement reads in conclusion: .

prepared for a career of professional excellence and service to the Nation as an officer in the United States Armydiagree.

The whole mission statement is

"To educate, train, and inspire the Corps of Cadets so that each graduate is a commissioned leader of character committed to the values of Duty, Honor, Country and prepared for a career of professional excellence and service to the Nation as an officer in the United States Army."

The previous mission statement did not have "as an officer in the United States Army." It was implied. The previous or previous previous Supe change the mission statement, so the mission statement could be changed again.

My opinion, the primary purpose of West Point is to provide our nation with "leader of character." If we just want army officers, OCS is a way to go. Or if you want a professional core officer core, make the service obligation 10 or 15 or 20 years.
 
Well- this thread has apparently become more about USMA than the proposal to change ROTC which is kind of too bad as I really thought that the idea of subbing extended concentrated training periods in the summer for weekly limited classroom time is worth discussing.
But to continue with the previous post: MemberLG- we are going to have to disagree about the mission of West Point. IMO- If all you are doing is producing "leaders of character to serve the nation" that's a pretty nebulous concept that is:
A. not the mission of the Army that funds and resources it, and
B. It's not the responsibility of the US Governmentto run an exceptionally expensive institution of higher learning for generic reasons that can and is met by aq number of private and state resources already.

If USMA isn't producing career Army Officers as its first and primary product, then it has no business being the US Military Academy. It's too expensive, it is hugely manpower intensive to run and takes hundreds of serving field grade Army Officers and sticks them into jobs as college professors -(at a time when the Army is sending Reserve Field Grade Officers on multiple tours to a combat zone - which indicates that it is strapped for manpower), and generally devours something to the tune of 1/2 $Billion annually for O&M and salary to include the AD salaries of the assigned personnel. That's an awful lot of resources to devote to an institution with no calling other than to produce generally good guys who will do well in generic endeavors. Fortunately for West Point the Previous Supe changed the mission statement back to one closer to what existed up until the mid 1970s and one which reflects what USMA is really about and what it's real reason for existence is: preparing Cadets for a career of professional excellence and service to the Nation as an officer in the United States Army. Not a career as stock brokers, or management consultants, entrepreneurs or bankers or anything else- - Officers in the United States Army. Not my words - theirs. BTW - here's an AOG white paper on the subject from 2004 when the retention rates were significantly higher- in which the author says better than I can why this is an issue for USMA:
"I will assert up front that the retention situation is dangerous and/or damaging in two major ways:
1. The situation begs the question: Why should the public subsidize such an
expensive educational and developmental operation only to find that its output is diverted, early on, from its primary purpose?
2. The egress from the active duty Army of so much talent and presence, long before its useful service period has expired, is a loss of huge proportions which can be ill afforded at any time."
http://www.west-point.org/publications/retention-whitepaper/RetentionPaperRev3.pdf

USMA never had 100% retention of its graduates past their initial obligated period of service, and that was never a goal or expectation- for years has been in the 55% range. But if the statistics on retention rates in the Jan 24 Army Times are accurate and are anything other than an anomoly, then it and the Army have a crisis. Keep that up very long and there will be no valid justification for the USMA . Arguments that the country benefits by military officers in civil life are confusing the primary objective with "nice to have" side benefits to the country. Yes the US benefits a lot from having former military officers walking around in civilian life. Good citizenship, resourceful managers and leadership in the private sector are side benefits for sure. But they are not the reason that the military resources Officer training programs and especially not why the Military Academy exists. We don't spend a veritable fortune training officers so that they can do well and make big wads of cash on their own. To use one of Pima's examples: yes the airlines have lots of qualified pilots thanks to former Air Force Officers and that is certainly a benficial unintended consequence. But while United Airlines benefits from the AFA training that many of its pilots received - would the Air Force justify more dollars to funding the training of pilots for civilian airlines because it is "in our best interests" to have good pilots flying my cattle car from Logan to OHare? Of course not. We spend the money to reap the benefits to the US Military of a well trained and committed professional officer corps. Yes- some of them will leave because it's not right for them and will do well on the outside as a credit to the USMA that first helped form them (and some will leave because they are not living up to the standard we expect of them). But they are side shows. USMA effectiveness- its primary mission -lives and dies by the value it provides to the US Army (hence the mission statement). That 65% of officers leaving on completion of the initial term of service statistic quoted in the Jan 24 print edition of Army Times should scare the heck out of you.
 
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I suppose it really comes down to how people view the role of the military in or society. bruno's point about "Citizen Soldier" taught to the cadets at Norwich and VMI and elsewhere may be affecting my view. Actually, now that I think about it, the whole premise of ROTC is "Citizen Soldier" because ROTC was a concept that traces its roots to Norwich, where ROTC began! After all, it is called "Reserve Officer Training Corps," not "Active Duty Officer Training Corps."

Many countries require that ALL young adults enter the military. They recognize that there is a cost to this, in terms of having to constantly retrain new conscripts. But these countries view the benefit to society as a better end-result.

The United States currently does not do this. But it does require folks to serve a little longer on active duty (actually double the amount of time that most countries with conscription require). The US military knows full well that people will leave the military at some point, and this is all factored in on a VERY sophisticated level whenever CC extends offers of scholarships. Just like the SAs can calculate how many Appointees will accept their appointments, the personnel folks at the Pentagon can calculate how many in each class will leave (even during bad economies -- they know folks aren't leaving when there aren't any jobs). If the military wants to make adjustments, it has plenty of incentives at its disposal to encourage folks to remain on active duty once they have gone beyond the initial service obligation. And it does exactly that! And it certainly knows how to RIF when the numbers get too high!! In short, the military is not a "babe in the woods" being taken advantage of by a bunch of bratty 18-year-olds looking for college money.

The perception that those who fulfill their service obligation have their head and their heart in the wrong place is improper, but unfortunately shared by many. I recall getting "the look" from my Division Commander (for whom I was working at the time) when I told him that I would be leaving active duty upon the completion of my service obligation. Admittedly, I was very ambivalent about the whole thing, and it was a very, very difficult decision (there's no "safey net" in the civilian world like there is in the military). Since then, I have gone in and out of public service and am thrilled with the things I do.

In any event, if one views the military as simply an organization that answers to no one, then the view that it should lock folks into longer contracts might make sense. However, the military has shareholders, much like a corporation. And its SOLE existence is there to benefit those shareholders. In the corporate setting, a company's employees might think it is wasteful for the company to pay dividends -- but those employees are forgetting that they exist solely to represent the interests of the shareholders. The shareholders of the military are members of the American public. Whatever the military does to make the American public better is certainly alright by me.
 
Bruno,

As a tax payer myself, I do believe that we need to get good return on our investment.

However, the issue is to how to identify qualified young men and women that will make military their career (I am assuming you are talking about 20 years)and get them to West Point. I might be the exception as I want to stay in the Army for 20 years plus. But marriage and a child changed my mind, so I left after 7 years. But I am a member of NG. A good friend of my I pegged as 5 and fly is still in and will stay beyond 20. On a side note, many of my classmates got called back to active duty after the 911.

I talk about a normal distribution a lot. I believe that young men and women that wants 20+ years in the military and actually does it are outliers, not normal.

We also have to consider desire vs. performance. Should we let some officers stay in the military just because they want to stay in even though their are poor performers?

A side dicussion we need to have is why are junior officers leaving the military. West Point will provide solid officers to the Army. How much responsbility does West Point have to ensure their graduates stay in the Army regardless of how they are treated? In my opinion, the retention is a shared responsbility between individual soldiers and the Army itself. There are enough blame to go around, not West Point alone.
 
If USMA isn't producing career Army Officers as its first and primary product, then it has no business being the US Military Academy.
There are those who will argue. with good logic. that a major, if not primary, reason for the SAs is to be the standard bearer, the benchmark, a laboratory to ascertain what is both valuable and doable. New things can be attempted and old things tweaked more readily than any other location. What separates it from OCS along these lines is that the collective history of the SA as opposed to OCS. Also, the overall expertise is much greater at a SA, ensuring that ALL facets of the proposal will be discussed and evaluated. If ROTC and SA grads perform differently, comparatively, it is easy to determine both why and if I is doable to change training to reflect a better end-product for the entire service.
 
Absolutely- all of the things below are true. There are a lot of factors that come into play in the decision to stay in the military for a career vs leaving at the first opportunity- and certainly not all of those are the responsibility of, or can even be tied to USMA. However, the nuber speaks for itself- there is (apparently- again I can't vouch for the accuracy of an Army Times story) disproportionately lower retention rate past the intial obligated period of service for USMA grads than for the other sources of commissioning. I can theorize what some of those are and some are easier than others- for example a significant number of OCS grads already have a lot of time under their belt when they get commissioned so they are already older and more invested in the system. Perhaps there is more competition in the job market on the outside for USMA grads than for others because of the relative prestige of USMA as an undergraduate degree. The general optempo for junior officers these days shouldn't be a discriminator as it ought to be true across the Army- (unless perhaps you can show that a disproportionate number of USMA grads are in combat arms units compared to other sources of commissioning and there for the stress levels are significantly higher?). I don't know what the cause or the answer is, but it is a trend that if true is alarming and it should (and probably is) spark a lot of analysis and brainstorming about causes and changes to how the Army does business in terms of how it attracts and trains junior officers from all sources and especially USMA since their retention numbers have dropped the most.

Bruno,

As a tax payer myself, I do believe that we need to get good return on our investment.

However, the issue is to how to identify qualified young men and women that will make military their career (I am assuming you are talking about 20 years)and get them to West Point. I might be the exception as I want to stay in the Army for 20 years plus. But marriage and a child changed my mind, so I left after 7 years. But I am a member of NG. A good friend of my I pegged as 5 and fly is still in and will stay beyond 20. On a side note, many of my classmates got called back to active duty after the 911.

I talk about a normal distribution a lot. I believe that young men and women that wants 20+ years in the military and actually does it are outliers, not normal.

We also have to consider desire vs. performance. Should we let some officers stay in the military just because they want to stay in even though their are poor performers?

A side dicussion we need to have is why are junior officers leaving the military. West Point will provide solid officers to the Army. How much responsbility does West Point have to ensure their graduates stay in the Army regardless of how they are treated? In my opinion, the retention is a shared responsbility between individual soldiers and the Army itself. There are enough blame to go around, not West Point alone.
 
From the introduction to a draft 2001 West Point AOG report about retention.

"This officer, whom we will designate a male, has been on active duty for, say, four years. Neither by nature a complainer nor by inclination a challenger of authority, he nonetheless feels frustrated by the circumstances in which he finds himself and disheartened by what he regards as scant prospects for change. When he graduated from the Academy, he was excited about the challenges that he faced and was open to the possibility of serving a full career in the Army. However, over the years his original enthusiasm for commissioned service gradually eroded and, like the members of every generation of West Point graduates, he began to reconsider his life’s path. This talented and successful young officer’s doubts are caused by a number of factors."

http://www.west-point.org/publications/AOGRetention.html
 
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