Point/Counterpoint: Are the Service Academies in Trouble?

[SWJED]

By Starbuck at Small Wars Journal:

This week, two instructors at the US Naval Academy discussed some of the challenges, strengths, and shortcomings of America’s service academies. The first is Dr. Bruce Fleming, a professor of English who is set to release his book Bridging the Military-Civilian Divide in August. Dr. Fleming penned an op-ed in Thursday’s New York Times entitled, The Academies’ March Toward Mediocrity.

Instead of better officers, the academies produce burned-out midshipmen and cadets. They come to us thinking they’ve entered a military Camelot, and find a maze of petty rules with no visible future application. These rules are applied inconsistently by the administration, and tend to change when a new superintendent is appointed every few years. The students quickly see through assurances that “people die if you do X” (like, “leave mold on your shower curtain,” a favorite claim of one recent administrator). We’re a military Disneyland, beloved by tourists but disillusioning to the young people who came hoping to make a difference.

In my experience, the students who find this most demoralizing are those who have already served as Marines and sailors (usually more than 5 percent of each incoming class), who know how the fleet works and realize that what we do on the military-training side of things is largely make-work. Academics, too, are compromised by the huge time commitment these exercises require. Yes, we still produce some Rhodes, Marshall and Truman Scholars. But mediocrity is the norm.

Meanwhile, the academy’s former pursuit of excellence seems to have been pushed aside by the all-consuming desire to beat Notre Dame at football (as Navy did last year). To keep our teams in the top divisions of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, we fill officer-candidate slots with students who have been recruited primarily for their skills at big-time sports. That means we reject candidates with much higher predictors of military success (and, yes, athletic skills that are more pertinent to military service) in favor of players who, according to many midshipmen who speak candidly to me, often have little commitment to the military itself.

Dr. Shaun Baker, a professor of philosophy, provides an excellent counterpoint to Dr. Fleming in an entry on his blog at Themistocles’ Shade. Dr. Baker received his PhD from Wayne State University, and is the Assistant Director of the James B. Stockdale Center for Ethical Leadership at the US Naval Academy. He teaches philosophy, coaches the Academy's Ethics Bowl team, and is the Stockdale Center's webmaster.

In the Naval Academy, there is a very strong tradition of exhortation to moral excellence, honesty, integrity, ideals taken very seriously, and as more than one mid on more than one occasion has put it, "pounded" into their heads from day one Plebe Summer. Yes, this exhortation may heighten the sort of sensitivity to inconsistency that gives rise to cynicism, but I believe it also has a pronounced effect on the day-to-day thinking of a majority of the mids.

They do take these values seriously, even as they recognize their own shortcomings, those of other midshipmen and the faculty and staff. In general, I would say that this does not diminish the fact that they do take these values seriously, and think about them, have them in the forefront of their minds much more so than would people that did not go through four years of such rigorous exhortation to ethical thinking and exemplary character.

Not only do all midshipmen go through a rigorous 4 year cycle of classes intended to drive home the importance of ethical thought, and ethical leadership, classes that explicitly take up and rationally discuss cynicism, among other germane topics (just war theory, international law, military justice, principles of servant leadership, followership, constitutional principles, and etc..) but the very nature of the institution they live in for four years puts them in a good position to understand the position of the enlisted people they will eventually work with. In many ways the academy does two things at the same time. It prepares for leadership at various ranks, in various ways intellectual, moral and emotional, but it also drives home how it is to be a lower level "cog" in a big quite hierarchical command-structured institution, and teaches one how to deal with that reality, and the cynicism that naturally results.

[sapperfitz82]

I am unfamiliar with the history of the Academies' woes, however is there any precedent in making them six year institutions, awarding Masters Degrees and requiring six years of service? If the problem is one of commitment perhaps upping the ante would help. On the other hand, perhaps the problem is who selects/retains the staff as well.

Also, forgive my heretical bent, but is there any truth to the decline coinciding with the coed student body and more liberal leaning in the institutions?

This ties into another thread that pointed out that USMA officers tend to do their four years and split. Perhaps they were not as prepared for the demands of military life as they thought the institution would prepare them? (Not relative to other sources of commission but to their expectations mind you.)

[GI Zhou]

This is based on a rather jaundiced view of officer training in the Australian Defence Force. I agree with Starbuck that we produce good quality junior officers in spite of the system. People with high academic scores as a rule do not join the military. They beocme doctors, dentists, lawyers, or do business degrees in top tier universities. Other than in engineering, and the chance to fly which is the biggest incentive of all, high quality students avoid the Australian Defence Force. If they decide to continue in the service after their initial term of service, unless they get a good position they invariably leave ,JUST as they are at the peak of their training. Our navy prefers people that can play rugby I am unrelaibly told.

My son at 20 earned more as a trainee accountant than an academy graduate with three years, (not including flying pay/sea going allowance, etc), already had property and shares, and a secure future with international travel prosects. The view of this ex-training specialist is that by the time they are ready to go into the world as a junior officer with all their initial courses under their belt they are at least 22 if not 23. In many cases they have fallen behind their peers money wise, it won't get better for at least four years, and most of their time if not operating a ship, plane, platoon, orderly room etc, is doing at least two SLJs (shirty little jobs) as OIC basketweaving etc. Heaven forbid if they want a social life, or increase their academic skills.

It was best summed up by two quotes admittedly from ten years ago, but I don't think it has changed. From a senior instructor: The aim of the academy is to produce officers not academics when commenting about a quote I was told by a student; if you get 51% it means you wasted time getting that extra 1% . Due to all the extra commitments at the academy, near enough is good enough becomes the norm in the academic side. I was doing a PhD at the Academy but they run out of supervisors with the appropraite skill set, so I transferred universities.

The quality of middle and senior officer training has been commented and written about by people far better qualified than me to judge. Mine might be considered libelous.

[Knapp]

From someone who IS a USMA grad (class of 94) and still on active duty, would like to address some of the sweeping generalizations that are just plain wrong.

First, that the academies are becoming academically mediocre (I guess I can really only speak about West Point: all cadets are required to take a foundation of math and science courses (calculus, physics, chemistry, statistics, plus an engineering track) that no other major universities require of all students regardless of their major of study. Secondly, please note the number of Rhodes scholars, etc that graduate each year and West Point is in the top 10 in the nation. Thirdly, of the military faculty, several do have PhDs AND have also served in post-9/11 deployments which can provide a fuller understanding of how academic subjects relate to the cadets' future.

Next, I'd like to point out that West Point was America....recognized by Forbes magazine in 2009 as the best college in the US. This is pretty impressive since the competition includes Ivy Leagues et. al.

Last, I can say from the curriculum and experience I had to what is currently being taught to cadets now, the academy is evolving with the times. The foundational courses remain, but the elective keep changing and especially the summer training programs have improved radically since my time. West Point now has a Counter-Terrorism Center of Excellence which produces scholarly writings as well as a monthly bulletin. More examples are possible, but am running out of time.

Sorry this is so long, have more thoughts but gotta head out now.

Knapp

[Entropy]

I have no doubt the Academies are fine schools. The point, however, is do to ask if they produce better officers? In my personal experience, they do not.

[Coindanasty]

Entropy - what defines a "better officer?" Is that really the point? Or is "the point" yet another in an endless and long-running trend of attacks on the service academies?

I'm a grad, and years ago I wrote an ill-advised and ill-researched paper on Academy grads vs. OTS vs. ROTC, out of which I concluded (mostly off a superior officer satisfaction study conducted sometime in either the 70s or 80s) that the academies did not do so and ought to be abolished based on this fact. You can probably guess my grade...

Really, this isn't about the counterpoint, which wouldn't exist without the original point in the first place, which is that the service academies are hurting. Whether or not the author's points are valid seems moot to me, as it reads more like the rant I wrote as a cadet than a well-informed and supported argument. But I can get behind the concept...

I think the institutions deserve some pretty hard looks and transformation. As other discussions on this board illuminate, easier said than done when dealing with a military bureaucracy.I have some ideas where to start, but I would like to hear some logically presented arguments on why service academies don't produce better officers, why they're in trouble, etc...

[Entropy]

Coindanasty,

Personally, I'm indifferent to the service academies. I have no bone to pick with them and I have no desire to see them go away or be seriously defenestrated. At the same time, however, I do not buy into the myth that academy officers are better officers, nor do I think the formal and informal career benefits Academy grads receive are warranted.

[Schmedlap]

Are the service academies going downhill? I don't know. But the issues raised are important ones - and they apply to all military schools and ROTC programs, in my opinion.

The emphasis upon idiotic rules, blind adherence to rules that nobody can explain the purpose for, and absurd claims that [insert minor oversight] will kill your men, do nothing to help prepare cadets for their future professional careers. It trains cadets to focus exclusively on identifying a rule and adhering to it, rather than thinking through a situation and determining whether the rule makes sense. I knew "leaders" who went into combat armed only with what templates they were taught from FM 7-8. They did not understand the general principles - they only understood that an ambush should resemble the one in the picture or that a traveling overwatch formation should resemble the one in the picture. They treated streets in an urban area like linear danger areas in the same way that one would treat a road encountered in the woods. Stupid. Those leaders lacked the ability to think creatively and improvise to unexpected changes in the situation or to think through situations that did not clearly fit the template they were hoping for.

It seems evident to me that this inability to think was fostered by years of blind adherence to idiotic rules that were never to be questioned or explained.