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Thread: Point/Counterpoint: Are the Service Academies in Trouble?

  1. #21
    Council Member MikeF's Avatar
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    Default Ironically

    Quote Originally Posted by Coindanasty View Post
    I may have just been a crappy cadet, but I'd have to think that somewhere along the way I learned something while getting smoked as a four-degree or in yet another pointless M-hour.
    or maybe more pointedly, the "crappy" cadets seem to be the only ones still in service. I was one. I was a rugby player- dirty, nasty, scum of the earth.

    If you look at an old corps photo of my boys, the ones that were shiny and glossy and compelled to a lifetime of service in the Army left a long time ago to corporate America.

    Those of us that were less than stellar (in appearance mind you not grades or perfomance) still remain. From that category, one is a doctor, one is a fullbright scholar finishing up his degree in Shanghai, and another is a test pilot currently drinking (correction studying) in Atlanta at Georgia Tech with a photographic memory. Others deploy and redeploy to Iraq/A'stan as commanders then advisors.

    I'm the blogger.

    In my small world, we encompass Anbar, Diyala, Baghdad, Nuristan, and Helmand.

  2. #22
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    Default

    Agree with MikeF and others that perhaps the best cadets don't always translate into the best officers, but I know some that certainly have.

    As far as the question of does what is learned at USMA prepare you to be an officer, I can say the foundational knowledge of what 'officership' truly means is the largest lesson I extracted.

    On a side note, I recently completed a survey on Officer Basic Education (am sure many of you did as well) and 'officership' was one of the components the survey covered.

    And by the way....the Corps HAS since 1995!

  3. #23
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    Default Not being a graduate

    but a long time observer of graduates, I am reminded of the characterization of West Point as an academic institution with a first rate student body and a second rate faculty. I can almost buy into that except when I look at faculty like Mike Meese, among others. Seriously, what I have seen over the years is an officer corps made up of Academy grads, ROTC pukes, OCS types, and ocxcasional direct commissions that blends them all together and spits out a rather good and adaptive group of officers. That said, IMO the academies are an essential part of the mix.

    Cheers

    JohnT

    PS if the characterization of West Point is correct, then it is interesting that the president of the university of Oklahoma's strategy to achieve excellence is to build the University based on the quality of its undergrads by recruiting National Merit scholars.

  4. #24
    Council Member MikeF's Avatar
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    Default I refuse to justify USMA...

    Like any institution, it has it's flaws...However, I will stake my ground...

    Quote Originally Posted by John T. Fishel View Post
    . I can almost buy into that except when I look at faculty like Mike Meese, among others.
    Let me reiterate that. I'm a product of Mike Meese's Econ department (now head of social sciences). I'm a product of Dr. Gordon McCormick's DA dept at NPS. I will defend either to the bloody end. I am but a measure of what they taught me coupled with my own lessons in leadership and small wars.

    One of my soldiers from Wildbunch, A/1-64 AR, from the Thunder Runs just emailed me. At the time, I was an XO, and he was a SPC, the CDR's driver.

    Hey remember the time you and I went and bought pizza's for the guys who had to stay over the weekend when the rest of the soldiers were in from the field actually you bought them i just picked them up and then we delivered them out to check on them

    no one else ever did that stuff in all my time I never had an ex even come and check on my ass out in the field haha
    It is what it is...Every man is but the same. Each one has a choice on how he will act.

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    Default

    I out-XO'd you Mike. I brought them pizza and a tent because I thought it was BS that the 1SG didn't inform the Soldiers that they were pulling ASP guard until 30 minutes before the rest of the company went back to garrison.

  6. #26
    Council Member MikeF's Avatar
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    Default Suck it Schmedlap...

    Quote Originally Posted by Schmedlap View Post
    I out-XO'd you Mike. I brought them pizza and a tent because I thought it was BS that the 1SG didn't inform the Soldiers that they were pulling ASP guard until 30 minutes before the rest of the company went back to garrison.
    Get back on your game and out CO me then we'll talk

    You know that i love ya...

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    I think this may be more relevant when it comes to which service academy you are talking about.

    USMA, for example, has made changes in response to real events that result in added value from it as an institution. The COIN center being most notable.

    As a USAFA grad I am hard pressed to come up with anything that has been done to improve the utility of graduating members in our post-Cold War world.

  8. #28
    i pwnd ur ooda loop selil's Avatar
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    I'd take the opinion and lumps to go with it that the entirety of the argument against the relevancy and capability of the military academies could be applied to the entirety of the higher education system of the world. Applicability and relevancy are often at odds with society as the institutions of higher education attempting to approach the edge of now are often still decades behind. That is the nature of a system that needs a decade to turn on a dime. You have to graduate often two classes of undergraduates to change an entire curriculum and that is an 8 to 10 year process. Never mind national mandated accreditation requirements, degree and program requirements, curricula changes, and a host of other issues and problems. So, there is more in this game than the service academies. My question is do you want well rounded graduates who can take on many tasks and problems with creativity or do you want specialists who are tool monkeys with no sense of the wider world? I can give you the former decade after decade forever. The second is only possible in very tiny amounts and missing is a possibility if not probability.
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    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Peacedog View Post
    As a USAFA grad I am hard pressed to come up with anything that has been done to improve the utility of graduating members in our post-Cold War world.
    Don't be so hard on the USAFA.

  10. #30
    Council Member Hacksaw's Avatar
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    Default In Re: MikeF

    Lets see class of 2000, Rugby Player... Must know Nick B... I was his sponsor... small world
    Hacksaw
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  11. #31
    Council Member Hacksaw's Avatar
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    Default In re re: Mike F

    Quote Originally Posted by Hacksaw View Post
    Lets see class of 2000, Rugby Player... Must know Nick B... I was his sponsor... small world
    Long Live Sosh...

    On a more serious note... I think our department in particular tried to make our curriculum as relevant as possible (might have been easier given the nature of AP/IR/ECON...

    Personally I added a constraints based MGMT/ACCT culminating event to my course in order to get cadets to think about/apply the principles of MR/MC and how a balanced system is one of the least efficient of all (counter-intuitive to most) when you dependent events and random variation - which is at the core of just about every military problem. A former student, IN FLT LDR in 3-101... came up to me at the weigh-house while we were deploying to Iraq and finds me and says, "I get it... this is the Herbie (chokepoint), that's why you're here isn't it"... probably the best confirmation I got out of my time spent at USMA...

    As a side note, when tasked with writing the plan for the Reconstruction & Stabilization of Northern Iraq (MAR -APR 2003)... I staffed the plan with SOSH (COL Meese - my mentor as well)... the point being that all the components that I wanted a read on resided in those floors in Lincoln Hall... While I might resemble the 2nd rate faculty comment, my contemporaries did not... and well to be brutally honest, I'd challenge just about any junior faculty member at an IVY league school to build the plan that we put together back then...

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  12. #32
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    Default Hacksaw

    I agree. I sort of had 2 points - the first was that the competitive nature of the student body at the academies is a strong point. Cadets and Midshipmen may not all be as acadeically qualified as their Ivy League counterparts but many of them give those guys and gals a run for their money. They also,as a group, tend to be better rounded. Comapred to ROTC grads, it's a mixed bag (BTW I was an Ivy League ROTC puke myself). It is, I think along with OU Pres David Boren, the quality of undergrad students sets the quality of the institution far more than grad students or faculty. My second point was that the faculty I know (mostly sosh and dormer sosh as well as history) have been as good or better than any I've seen in universities. I would add that our fellow contributor Gian Gentile is nowat USMA challenging cadets and faculty alike.

    Cheers

    JohnT

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    Each commissioning source makes unique contributions to the officer corps as a whole. I would submit that we would be weaker without every one of them and the resulting blend of competencies.

  14. #34
    Council Member MikeF's Avatar
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    Default Honor Code

    Hacksaw makes some strong points about the academics. I'll offer one serious post on the honor code.

    The cadet honor code is very strict- all black and white. For instance, if a cadet has his roommate help him with homework and he fails to footnote the help, then he is cheating.

    I only served on one honor board (jury not the defendant ). It was about four months before we graduated. The defendant was ranked third or fourth academically out of our class. He was one of the super over-achievers. He was accused of copying his roommate's work for one minor project. He was found guilty and kicked out of school.

    That's the standard the we had to uphold at school. Integrity, honor, and duty remain on the forefront of a graduate's mind. Now, transitioning that into the real world of gray can take some time, but that's why God made NCO's.

    Mike

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    Council Member William F. Owen's Avatar
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    Default No dog in this fight

    Can someone explain to me what is actually good about the system in places like West Point? - I mean good in an objective sense.

    From an outsider view point it is not entirely clear how or if any of this produces better combat commanders. It certainly seems to take a vast amount of time and cost, for what seems not an obvious advantage.

    As I say, just curious. From what I seen and read they seem far more rule-based, rigid, and absolutist than the anything the British or even German Armies had in their hay day!
    Infinity Journal "I don't care if this works in practice. I want to see it work in theory!"

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    - If we can double the ratio of kills per contact, we will soon put an end to the shooting in Malaya.
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    Quote Originally Posted by William F. Owen View Post
    From an outsider view point it is not entirely clear how or if any of this produces better combat commanders. It certainly seems to take a vast amount of time and cost, for what seems not an obvious advantage.

    As I say, just curious. From what I seen and read they seem far more rule-based, rigid, and absolutist than the anything the British or even German Armies had in their hay day!
    Depends upon who the outsider is. I went to a private military school. We looked upon the academies in much the same way that Soldiers in a patrol base look at the FOB.

  17. #37
    Council Member Uboat509's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Schmedlap View Post
    Depends upon who the outsider is. I went to a private military school. We looked upon the academies in much the same way that Soldiers in a patrol base look at the FOB.
    The service academies have Burger King and Rip-Its?
    “Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.”

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    Quote Originally Posted by Uboat509 View Post
    The service academies have Burger King and Rip-Its?
    Well, kind of. During my freshman year I considered transferring to West Point, but it seemed over the top to me. Their chow hall made ours look like a soup kitchen. Their athletic facilities/gym/etc made ours look like a small town high school. Their barracks rooms made ours look like a homeless shelter. In hindsight, perhaps my school was more austere than necessary. But, being a 19-year-old who had willingly been brainwashed by Drill Instructors and a handful of grizzled Vietnam War vets who worked at my school, I thought that anything was too soft if it didn't involve crawling through mud and broken glass.

  19. #39
    Council Member MikeF's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Schmedlap View Post
    During my freshman year I considered transferring to West Point, but it seemed over the top to me.
    Why is the Junior Varsity always so damn jealous of the Varsity team ?

    Did you have to walk uphill both ways to class too? Sounds like you went to school in a northwestern mountainous part of a state where they dig banjos, sleeping with cousins, and the legal age for marraige is 16.

  20. #40
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    Default Hay is for horses!

    Wilf, it's hey day - just kidding. You have a serious question there. Back in 1802 when WP was founded it was THE engineering school in the US. For 50 years +/- it has been a highly selective undergraduate university that produces a significant minority of army officers. Generally, those officers collectively are promoted at a higher rate than their peers from other commissioning sources making up about half the generals the army promotes. Historically, the leaders on both sides of the Am Civil War were from WP. The leaders of the US army in WWII were mostly from WP and many key leaders were from the WP class of 1915. One exception was G. C. Marshall who graduated from VMI.
    The modern US military requires all its officers to have an undergraduate degree. Some National Guard officers can still be commissioned without it but they can't be promoted with Federal recognition until they have a degree. So, the question is how WP stacks up against other universities. Academically (based on selection test scores - the SAT) WP is not as good as Harvard or other Ivy League schools but it is near the top of the second tier and better than most state universities and a lot of private ones. It is also more selective in looking for leadership skills, some athletic ability and other attributes that are deemed desirable in a military leader.
    While a majority of Academy grads leave service after their obligation is over, many of those made mistakes as LTs that other LTs receive forgiveness for. Many of those who leave active service do stay in the reserve or National Guard and tend to do very well assuming real leadership positions. And many assume leadership roles in civilian life.
    So, the bottom line is that WP and the other service academies serve the nation in many ways and provide more than their fair share of leaders both military and civilian. Is it the best way? the most efficient way? Who knows. It is consistent with American culture and does produce some of our best combat leaders (also some not so good).
    Don't know if that answers your question. But also think about some of the folk who contribute to this forum. Some of the most thoughtful - more than what we have any reason to expect - are academy grads.
    (Not me, of course!)

    Cheers

    JohnT

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