Elite Institutions and Military Service

Great work, John.

I've linked to you here: http://consul-at-arms.blogspot.com/2006/07/re-elites-institutions-and-military.html

congratulations

Excellent work, John.

Very impressive.

I knew ROTC programs were struggling or banned at "elite" campuses, but I hadn't heard the details you cite. Thanks for the education!

The logic is impeccable. Good connection.

Great job as always, Noons.

Great work, buddy. Keep it up.

Well said, unfortunately the moonbat left has ingrained itself in all phases of education and will stay that way for the forseeable future. Your piece should be manditory reading for all !

Good job.

One reason I got out of the military in 1995 was that I saw, after Tailhook and the subsequent kinder-gentler treatments, that our leadership was taking a shellacking. Even as an enlisted aircrewman, the quality of the future decision makers seemed to be questionable.

Without the best-of-the-best coming from ROTC, particularly Ivy League, the ringknockers (Naval Acadamy) are just about all that's left of the more elite, well-educated officers. At least the ones that I continue to meet in the jobs I used to do.

It also used to be a whole lot more 'diverse', politically, fifteen years ago: Now it seems, the only people who choose to serve (read: career sailors/marines) are by and large conservative, with little liberal representation to speak of.

I remember flying with one Journalism major, 'Bone', an absolute wiseass liberal Naval Flight Officer (NFO) with a great sense of situational awareness in the jet and situational comedy about the life in the military. NFOs are like the Rodney Dangerfields of NA - even enlisted aircrewmen pick on them since we made half as much and did twice the work ;-)

Bone was, to me, representative of the 'other side' of smart, fully capable officers, representing the AOCS / ROTC pipeline from an Ivy League school. Great to fly with, and representative of the best of the 'double-anchor' community. He made me think about foreign policy and was the best devil's advocate.

Now that is about as rare to find as urinals are on the open carrier flight deck - not many, and if you do find one, they don't work and have been taped off for use. ;-)

Good, inspiring stuff. Now welcome to the great big world of Army politics.

1. Rule One in the old Soviet tactical manual was, "Never reinforce failure." Negative publicity never helped any program expand, and never helped anyone get promoted. Why worry about office space at Yale when Virginia Tech wants to oppen a new battalion.

2. The "R" in ROTC is for "Reserve". Most grads only serve briefly on active duty. They will eventually become the backbone or the reserve and National Guard force. So having good ROTC programs at state colleges and universities in all 50 states is a much higher priority than having programs at elite private colleges clustered on the East and Left Coasts. Governor, Senators, and Congressmen really understand this.

3. Scholarships are a zero-sum game. The scholarship money that used to flow to the Ivy League? It didn't disappear, it just went elsewhere. When some programs got smaller, others got bigger. The Ivys might have turned their back, but other colleges now have a very vested interest in the status quo.

4. The Race Card. The Ivy League might have had hundred of ROTC cadets in between Korea and Vietnam, but the TBCs (Traditioanlly Black Colleges, in Cadet Command lingo) didn't. Guess what? They do now. The ROTC programs at the TBCs expanded tremendously after Vietnam, and they saved the Army's and ROTC's bacon, affirmitive action-wise. You can make the argument that a strong ROTC program at Tuskegee is far more important to natioanl institutions than one at Princeton.

5. ROTC has its supporters, but it also has its enemies. It many ways, it is a tremendously expensive and ineffective way to train officers (and don't even get me started about the millions wasted on Junior ROTC programs in high schools). Any time there's "ROTC off campus" on the news, the arguments for service academy and OCS officer acquisitions look better and better.

All said, I think you're right, and that we would be better off with stronger ROTC programs at ivys and other places. But that isn't going to happen, and reasons that don't all depend on what "Beardo-the-Weirdo" are saying on campuses.

Good, inspiring stuff. Now welcome to the great big world of Army politics.

1. Rule One in the old Soviet tactical manual was, "Never reinforce failure." Negative publicity never helped any program expand, and never helped anyone get promoted. Why worry about office space at Yale when Virginia Tech wants to oppen a new battalion.

2. The "R" in ROTC is for "Reserve". Most grads only serve briefly on active duty. They will eventually become the backbone or the reserve and National Guard force. So having good ROTC programs at state colleges and universities in all 50 states is a much higher priority than having programs at elite private colleges clustered on the East and Left Coasts. Governor, Senators, and Congressmen really understand this.

3. Scholarships are a zero-sum game. The scholarship money that used to flow to the Ivy League? It didn't disappear, it just went elsewhere. When some programs got smaller, others got bigger. The Ivys might have turned their back, but other colleges now have a very vested interest in the status quo.

4. The Race Card. The Ivy League might have had hundred of ROTC cadets in between Korea and Vietnam, but the TBCs (Traditioanlly Black Colleges, in Cadet Command lingo) didn't. Guess what? They do now. The ROTC programs at the TBCs expanded tremendously after Vietnam, and they saved the Army's and ROTC's bacon, affirmitive action-wise. You can make the argument that a strong ROTC program at Tuskegee is far more important to natioanl institutions than one at Princeton.

5. ROTC has its supporters, but it also has its enemies. It many ways, it is a tremendously expensive and ineffective way to train officers (and don't even get me started about the millions wasted on Junior ROTC programs in high schools). Any time there's "ROTC off campus" on the news, the arguments for service academy and OCS officer acquisitions look better and better.

All said, I think you're right, and that we would be better off with stronger ROTC programs at ivys and other places. But that isn't going to happen, and reasons that don't all depend on what "Beardo-the-Weirdo" are saying on campuses.

Congratulations! Very well written and resoned. Of course, I expect no less of you.

There is nothing stopping Ivy League grads from going OCS after they graduate. The problem isn't whether or not ROTC is on campus. If Ivy League students were motivated to join the military they would find a way to join. It doesn't take a lot of effort. You just walk into the local recruiter's office. But that's not happening and there is a reason for that. And yet somehow, even without the contribution of Ivy League grads, we continue to field the best military the world has ever seen.

Actually, we don't really know if Ivy League grads are flocking tothe recruiting stations for OCS or not. I suspect that is not the case, but you can't find the data for it anywhere. At best you'll find out the percentage of candidates who are college grads, but there is not data entry code for "prestige university" vs. "cow college". You'd have to dig pretty deep into the data base to come up "degree granting institution" individually for sever years worth of candidates.

That said, pb is right, it isn't like there's an officer shortage, and that a real or perceived Ivy League gar officer shortage is leading to sergeants leading platoons or not having enough ensigns to man the rowboats, or whatever it is they do in the Navy/

Which leads to another institutional pressure -- Naval ROTC had always been more limited in scope than the Army or Air Force. Cadets in NROTC have had to travel to different campuses for years, and it hasn't been a big deal for them. So the Navy doesn't really have a dog in this fight.

Well, at least the Barnard women are not shy. I'm going Army Reserves in the fall and when I took the DLAB with 3 others in Brooklyn, the one other female taking the test was of my same collegiate cloth.
Here.we.come.

You go, Kid Hope you knocked the DLAB out of the park. A year learning a foreign language at Presidio of Montery is a thrill everyone should have.

Currently the CO is one of my old lieutenants from Berlin, and the CSM was my squad leader when I went through DLI, back in the old green fatigue/khaki Army.